ON THE BEACH AT DAYTONA. 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. 
His 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 
least. 
