girls sitting on its margin and--yes, it is veritably
so--laving their snowy feet in the sunny water? These, these are the
warm realities of those three visionary shapes that flitted from me on
the beach. Hark their merry voices as they toss up the water with
their feet! They have not seen me. I must shrink behind this rock and
steal away again.

In honest truth, vowed to solitude as I am, there is something in this
encounter that makes the heart flutter with a strangely pleasant
sensation. I know these girls to be realities of flesh and blood, yet,
glancing at them so briefly, they mingle like kindred creatures with
the ideal beings of my mind. It is pleasant, likewise, to gaze down
from some high crag and watch a group of children gathering pebbles
and pearly shells and playing with the surf as with old Ocean's hoary
beard. Nor does it infringe upon my seclusion to see yonder boat at
anchor off the shore swinging dreamily to and fro and rising and
sinking with the alternate swell, while the crew--four gentlemen in
roundabout jackets--are busy with their fishing-lines. But with an
inward antipathy and a headlong flight do I eschew the presence of any
meditative stroller like myself, known by his pilgrim-staff, his
sauntering step, his shy demeanor, his observant yet abstracted eye.

From such a man as if another self had scared me I scramble hastily
over the rocks, and take refuge in a nook which many a secret hour has
given me a right to call my own. I would do battle for it even with
the churl that should produce the title-deeds. Have not my musings
melted into its rocky walls and sandy floor and made them a portion of
myself? It is a recess in the line of cliffs, walled round by a rough,
high precipice which almost encircles and shuts in a little space of
sand. In front the sea appears as between the pillars of a portal; in
the rear the precipice is broken and intermixed with earth which gives
nourishment not only to clinging and twining shrubs, but to trees that
grip the rock with their naked roots and seem to struggle hard for
footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir trees, but
oaks hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns on
the beach, and shed their withering foliage upon the waves. At this
autumnal season the precipice is decked with variegated splendor.
Trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of
yellow-flowering shrubs and rose-bushes, with their re