ofitable to retrace our steps and recall the whole mood and
occupation of the mind during the former passage. Our tracks, being
all discernible, will guide us with an observing consciousness through
every unconscious wandering of thought and fancy. Here we followed the
surf in its reflux to pick up a shell which the sea seemed loth to
relinquish. Here we found a seaweed with an immense brown leaf, and
trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk. Here we seized a
live horseshoe by the tail, and counted the many claws of that queer
monster. Here we dug into the sand for pebbles, and skipped them upon
the surface of the water. Here we wet our feet while examining a
jelly-fish which the waves, having just tossed it up, now sought to
snatch away again. Here we trod along the brink of a fresh-water
brooklet which flows across the beach, becoming shallower and more
shallow, till at last it sinks into the sand and perishes in the
effort to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some vagary
appears to have bewildered us, for our tracks go round and round and
are confusedly intermingled, as if we had found a labyrinth upon the
level beach. And here amid our idle pastime we sat down upon almost
the only stone that breaks the surface of the sand, and were lost in
an unlooked-for and overpowering conception of the majesty and
awfulness of the great deep. Thus by tracking our footprints in the
sand we track our own nature in its wayward course, and steal a glance
upon it when it never dreams of being so observed. Such glances always
make us wiser.

This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant pastime. With
your staff you may write verses--love-verses if they please you
best--and consecrate them with a woman's name. Here, too, may be
inscribed thoughts, feelings, desires, warm outgushings from the
heart's secret places, which you would not pour upon the sand without
the certainty that almost ere the sky has looked upon them the sea
will wash them out. Stir not hence till the record be effaced. Now
(for there is room enough on your canvas) draw huge faces--huge as
that of the Sphynx on Egyptian sands--and fit them with bodies of
corresponding immensity and legs which might stride halfway to yonder
island. Child's-play becomes magnificent on so grand a scale. But,
after all, the most fascinating employment is simply to write your
name in the sand. Draw the letters gigantic, so that two strides may
barely measure them