ON THE BEACH AT DAYTON A. 57 



beach to Ormond, I saw before me a much 

 more elaborate Queen Anne house. Fanci- 

 fully but rather neatly painted, and with a 

 stable to match, it looked like an exotic. As 

 I drew near, its venerable owner was at work 

 in front of it, shoveling a path through the 

 sand, just as, at that moment (February 

 24), thousands of Yankee householders were 

 shoveling paths through the snow, which 

 then was reported by the newspapers to be 

 seventeen inches deep in the streets of Boston. 

 I lis reverend air and his long black coat pro- 

 claimed him a clergyman past all possibility 

 of doubt. He seemed to have got to heaven 

 before death, the place was so attractive ; but 

 being still in a body terrestrial, he may have 

 found the meat market rather distant, and 

 mosquitoes and sand-flies sometimes a plague. 

 As I walked up the beach, he drove by me 

 in an open wagon with a hired man. They 

 kept on till they came to a log which had 

 been cast up by the sea, and evidently had 

 been sighted from the house. The hired man 

 lifted it into the wagon, and they drove 

 back, quite a stirring adventure, I im- 

 agined ; an event to date from, at the very 



