he hours of dawn, and the tawny-throated
king of songsters made my pulses tremble with his wild ecstasy; and the
blackbird poured forth mellow defiance, and the thrush shrilled in his
lovely fashion concerning the joy of existence.

Pass, dreams! The long beams are drawn from the bosom of dawn. The gray
of the quiet sea quickens into rose, and soon the glittering serpentine
streaks of colour quiver into a blaze; the brown sands glow, and the
little waves run inward, showing milky curves under the gay light; the
shoregoing boats come home, and their sails--those coarse tanned
sails--are like flowers that wake with the daisies and the peonies to
feast on the sun. Happy holiday-makers who are wise enough to watch the
fishers come in! The booted thickly-clad fellows plunge into the shallow
water; and then the bare-footed women come down, and the harvest of the
night is carried up the cliffs before the most of the holiday-folk have
fairly awakened. The proud day broadens to its height, and the sands are
blackened by the growing crowd; for the beach near a fashionable
watering-place is like a section cut from a turbulent city street, save
that the folk on the sands think of aught but business. I have never
been able to sympathize with those who can perceive only vulgarity in a
seaside crowd. It is well to care for deserted shores and dark moaning
forests in the far North; but the average British holiday-maker is a
sociable creature; he likes to feel the sense of companionship, and his
spirits rise in proportion to the density of the crowd amid which he
disports himself. To me, the life, the concentrated enjoyment, the ways
of the children who are set free from the trammels of town life, are all
like so much poetry. I learned early to rejoice in silent sympathy with
the rejoicing of God's creatures. Only to watch the languid pose of some
steady toiler from the City is enough to give discontented people a
goodly lesson. The man has been ground in the mill for a year; his
modest life has left him no time for enjoyment, and his ideas of all
pleasure are crude. Watch him as he remains passively in an ecstasy of
rest. The cries of children, the confused jargon of the crowd, fall but
faintly on his nerves; he likes the sensation of being in company; he
has a dim notion of the beauty of the vast sky with its shining
snowy-bosomed clouds, and he lets the light breeze blow over him. I like
to look on that good citizen and contrast the d