, with here and there a tiny cat's-paw crinkling
the water into gray-green crepe. And also when--but there! it is no use
cataloguing all kinds of weather and all hours of the day and night.
What I don't approve of in the ocean is its everlasting bigness. It is
so discouraging. It makes a body seem so no-account and insignificant.
You come away feeling meaner than a sheep-killing dog. "Oh, what's the
use?" you say to yourself. "What's the use of my breaking my neck to do
anything or be anybody? Before I was born--before History began--before
any foot of being that could be called a man trod these sands, the waves
beat thus the pulse of time. When I am gone--when all that man has made,
that seems so firm and everlasting, shall have crumbled into the earth,
whence it sprang, this wave, so momentary and so eternal, shall still
surge up the slanting beach, and trail its lacy mantle in retreat.... O
spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go hence, and
be no more seen."

And that's no way for a man to feel. He ought to be confident and sure
of himself. If he hasn't yet done all that he laid out to do, he should
feel that it is in him to do it, and that he will before the time comes
for him to go, and that when it is done it shall be orth while.

It is the ocean's everlasting bigness that makes it so cold to swim in.
At the seaside bathing pavilions they have a blackboard whereon they
chalk up "70" or "72" or whatever they think folks will like. They never
say in so many words that a man went down into the water and held a
thermometer in it long enough to get the true temperature, but they
lead you to believe it. All I have to say is that they must have very
optimistic thermometers. I just wish some of these poor little seashore
boys could have a chance to try the Old Swimming-hole up above the dam.
Certainly along about early going-barefoot time the water is a little
cool, but you take it in the middle of August--ah, I tell you! When you
come out of the water then you don't have to run up and down to get your
blood in circulation or pile the warm sand on yourself or hunt for the
steam-room. Only thing is, if you stay in all day, as you want to, it
thins your blood, and you get the "fever 'n' ager." But you can stay in
as long as you want to, that 's the point, without your lips turning the
color of a chicken's gizzard.

And there's this about the Old Swimming-hole, or there was in my day:
There were no wo