166 A SALT BREEZE. 



In Biblical times, new-born babies were rubbed with 

 salt. I suppose it stimulated them and quickened 

 their circulation. American babies are not thus 

 rubbed, and there comes a time with most of us 

 when we feel that the operation cannot be put off 

 any longer, and we rush down to the sea to have the 

 service performed by the old nurse herself, and the 

 pores of both mind and body well cleansed and 

 opened. 



Nothing about the sea is more impressive than its 

 ceaseless rocking. Without either wind or tide, it 

 would probably be restless and oscillating, because it 

 registers and passes along the fluctuations of the 

 earthy crust. The solid ground is only relatively 

 solid. The scientists, under the direction of the 

 British Association, who sought to determine the in- 

 fluence of the moon upon the earth's crust, found, as 

 soon as their instruments were delicate enough to reg- 

 ister the influence of that body, many other agencies 

 at work. They could find no really solid spot to 

 plant their instruments upon. Thus, over the area 

 of a high barometer, the earth's crust bent beneath 

 the weight of the column of air. At sea the waters 

 are pressed down. The waves of the atmospheric 

 ocean, as they sweep around the earth in vast alter- 

 nations, cause both land and water to rise and fall as 

 beneath the tread of some striding Colossus. This 

 unequal barometric pressure over the Atlantic area 

 would, doubtless, of itself keep its equilibrium per- 

 petually disturbed. Thus, " the cradle endlessly rock- 



