Watching the Brant Grow Big. 55 



The sea air smells. It is growing richer 

 with the exhalations from looming flats as 

 the tide shrinks, and with ozone from the 

 growling, muttering surf of the outer 

 beach. I, eagerly inhaling, find in dis- 

 tending lungfuls of it the peace of the in- 

 fusoria of the flats and the power of the 

 grand, swinging ocean. Every breath 

 soiled by me is carried onward and away 

 to the westward and replaced by a new 

 one. How long, clean east wind, before I 

 am translucent within ? For last night 

 we left the city where men call air the 

 emanations from percolating swill and 

 cast-off things, and where the tarnishing 

 atmosphere, laden with entities of death, 

 reeks in the nostrils and dulls the eyes of 

 that poor mammal whose brain hangs de- 

 pendent over figures and fads, amid the 

 walls and corridors and walls again, that 

 keep from him the sight of this sweet 

 world. Is any other love like love for 

 nature ? Is any joy like the joy of the 

 sportsman ? I have seen the mother with 

 eyes suffused with tears of love for the 

 chubby boy in her arms. I have heard 

 the maiden pray for power to love her 



