it is so human. Of all the things I have ever seen, only the
sea is like a human being; the sky is not, nor the earth. But the sea is
always moving, always something deep in itself is stirring it. It never
rests. It is always wanting, wanting, wanting. It hurries on; and then
it creeps back slowly without having reached, moaning. It is always
asking a question, and it never gets the answer. I can hear it in the
day and in the night; the white foam breakers are saying that which I
think. I walk alone with them when there is no one to see me, and I sing
with them. I lie down on the sand and watch them with my eyes half shut.
The sky is better, but it is so high above our heads. I love the
sea. Sometimes we must look down too. After five days I went back to
Grahamstown.

"I had glorious books, and in the night I could sit in my little room
and read them; but I was lonely. Books are not the same things when you
are living among people. I cannot tell why, but they are dead. On the
farm they would have been living beings to me; but here, where there
were so many people about me, I wanted some one to belong to me. I was
lonely. I wanted something that was flesh and blood. Once on this farm
there came a stranger; I did not ask his name, but he sat among the
karoo and talked with me. Now, wherever I have travelled I have looked
for him--in hotels, in streets, in passenger wagons as they rushed in,
through the open windows of houses I have looked for him, but I have not
found him--never heard a voice like his. One day I went to the Botanic
Gardens. It was a half-holiday, and the band was to play. I stood in the
long raised avenue and looked down. There were many flowers, and ladies
and children were walking about beautifully dressed. At last the music
began. I had not heard such music before.

"At first it was slow and even, like the everyday life, when we walk
through it without thought or feeling; then it grew faster, then it
paused, hesitated, then it was quite still for an instant, and then it
burst out. Lyndall, they made heaven right when they made it all music.
It takes you up and carries you away, away, till you have the things
you longed for, you are up close to them. You have got out into a large,
free, open place. I could not see anything while it was playing; I stood
with my head against my tree; but, when it was done, I saw that there
were ladies sitting close to me on a wooden bench, and the stranger who
had talked