70 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



of the herds on the plains of the West, and would crowd about 

 a stray huntsman. On one occasion while I was hunting 

 plover, they crowded me over the edge of the sea cliff, till I 

 had to stop them with bird-shot from my fowling-piece 

 not in rage but from stupid curiosity. The noble solitude of 

 the place was strangely attractive to me; there I first came to 

 know the splendor of such isolation. 



I have not been on Montauk since that visit of half a century 

 ago. I have kept away from it because the memory is so rich 

 and full that I have feared to disturb it by reseeing. The light- 

 house, a great pond with an ancient house where I lodged 

 between it and the sea, the cry of the plover, the air from the 

 sea, are as yesterday in memory; above all, a startling feature 

 when by chance the face of the moon rising above the ocean 

 was crossed by a ship, so far away that for a moment it was 

 framed in its round. It was here that the sea came to my soul. 

 Save for that fortnight at Montauk, which did much for me, I 

 have no pleasant recollections of my visit to Sag Harbor. I did 

 not do well with the youth of the place; they treated me ill and 

 did not take the consequences in good part. Among the older 

 folk were some who were broadened by wide contact with the 

 world. I saw that they were queer figures; they treated me 

 kindly, but at that time I was a solitary a bit misanthropic. 

 The fact that I volunteered to serve some kind of a visit upon 

 a bully who had threatened dire things to any one who would 

 beard him in his den, a lonely farmhouse, finding him at 

 the time very peaceable, seemed to convince the older folk that 

 I was in some way dangerous; only with the sailors of the 

 whaling ships did I find men after my mind. 



