buildings of gigantic
dimensions; and mostly a vast mass of uncertain shapes, knocking
against each other in fury, and seething and foaming in their
anger; the gray sky, with its mountains of gloomy clouds,
flying, moving with the waves, as it seemed, very near them; the
absence of any object besides the one ship; and the deep, solemn
groans of the sea, sounding as if all the voices of the world
had been turned into sighs and then gathered into that one
mournful sound--so deeply did I feel the presence of these
things, that the feeling became one of awe, both painful and
sweet, and stirring and warming, and deep and calm and grand.

I would imagine myself all alone on the ocean, and Robinson
Crusoe was very real to me. I was alone sometimes. I was aware
of no human presence; I was conscious only of sea and sky and
something I did not understand. And as I listened to its solemn
voice, I felt as if I had found a friend, and knew that I loved
the ocean. It seemed as if it were within as well as without,
part of myself; and I wondered how I had lived without it, and
if I could ever part with it.

And so suffering, fearing, brooding, rejoicing we crept nearer and
nearer to the coveted shore, until, on a glorious May morning, six
weeks after our departure from Polotzk, our eyes beheld the Promised
Land, and my father received us in his arms.

CHAPTER IX

THE PROMISED LAND

Having made such good time across the ocean, I ought to be able to
proceed no less rapidly on _terra firma_, where, after all, I am more
at home. And yet here is where I falter. Not that I hesitated, even
for the space of a breath, in my first steps in America. There was no
time to hesitate. The most ignorant immigrant, on landing proceeds to
give and receive greetings, to eat, sleep and rise, after the manner
of his own country; wherein he is corrected, admonished, and laughed
at, whether by interested friends or the most indifferent strangers;
and his American experience is thus begun. The process is spontaneous
on all sides, like the education of the child by the family circle.
But while the most stupid nursery maid is able to contribute her part
toward the result, we do not expect an analysis of the process to be
furnished by any member of the family, least of all by the engaging
infant. The philosophical maiden aunt alone, or some other witness
equally psychological