hrough the thick deluge. The ocean itself, tossing and tumbling in
angry darkness, seemed fighting with the other ocean that poured from
the black wall above, and all was one tumult of thunderous fury. This
elemental war lasted but a short time, and gave place to a quiet as
sudden as its angry burst. It was my first experience of a squall. It is
always difficult for me to feel that a storm is a natural
occurrence,--so that I have a great reverence for a Dominie who stands
with head uncovered, with calm eyes, looking tranquilly out on the
loudest tempest.

"Beautiful! wonderful!" he murmured, as the lightning fiercely shot over
us, and the roar died away in long billows of heavy sound.

Afterwards he told me he had the same unbounded delight in a great storm
as he had at the foot of Niagara, or in looking at the stars on a winter
night: that it stirred in his soul all that was loftiest,--that for the
time he could comprehend Deity, and that "the noise of the thundering of
His waters" was an anthem that struck the highest chords of his nature.
What is really sublime takes us out of ourselves, so that we have no
room for personal terror, and we mingle with the elemental roar in
spirit as with something kindred to us. I guessed this, and meditated on
it, while I stopped my ears and shut my eyes and trembled with
overwhelming terror myself. Clearly, I am a coward, in spite of my
admiration of the sublime. The Dominie, being as good as he is great,
does not require a woman to be sublime, luckily; and I think, as I like
him all the better for his strength, he really does not object to a
moderate amount of weakness on my part, which is unaffected and not to
be helped. When animal magnetism becomes a science, it will be seen why
some spirits revel and soar, and some cower and shrink, at the same
amount of electricity. So the Dominie says now; and then--he said
nothing.

XV.

In the fright, excitement, and thorough wetting, I forgot about the
boat,--or rather, no misgiving seized me as to its safety. But, on
coming to breakfast the next morning, we felt that there was a great
commotion in the house. Everybody was out on the piazza, and a crowd was
gathered a short distance off. Somebody had taken off the doors from the
south entrance, and there was a sort of procession already formed on
each side of these two doors. We went out in front of the house to
listen to a rough fisherman who described the storm in which the little