South Beach. 47 



swept smooth by the broom of the ocean every twelve 

 hours, and the yellow-brown tints of the meadow-grass in 

 Autumn, tempt you to stop and to gaze. When all of this 

 is spread out into acres, and into miles, and you recline, 

 half dreaming, on a dune, and the pleasant wonderment 

 of the scene steals into your mind, mayhap the tears will 

 stream down your face. Yet you know not why the 

 common scene affects you so, and that you should feel 

 that sadness that seems akin to heavenly joy. 



" It is a view of delight," says Lucretius. " to stand or 

 walk upon the shore-side, and to see a ship tossed with 

 tempest upon the sea . . . " ; so, likewise, it is pleas- 

 ant on the hazy and foggy days to hear the horns of the 

 unseen steamers far out over the water. The sound comes 

 booming across the waves like some giant cow mooing 

 most obstreperously in the distance, having lost her way. 



At night the beach is strange. I have been there on 

 dark, cloudy evenings, such as follow the lowering days 

 that come late in the Fall. All of the drift-timber seems 

 then to entangle your feet, and you come suddenly face to 

 face with ghastly pieces of wreck, that mimic in their 

 strangeness the fantastic forms of the creatures that 

 inhabit the sea. What can be a greater wonder than the 

 phosphorescent glimmerings that bedeck the waves as 

 they break on the shore ? The jellyfish, that die at the 

 end of summer and disintegrate, make the sand luminous, 

 and at every step you see your glowing tracks behind ; 

 you make golden foot-prints in the sands, as if indeed some 

 superhuman being had passed that way. The glowing 

 embers of the fishermen's fires start and die with the 



