At the Water's Edge 



motley collection of cheap, tasteless houses, worse 

 than factory dwellings, each propped on its 

 own arid sand-heap, not one of them facing 

 any conceivable point of the compass, and no 

 two standing at any calculable angle with each 

 other, but all looking as if they might have 

 been carried across the Bay from the main land 

 by a tornado, and dropped on this general 

 dumping ground ; various small restaurants 

 bearing the questionable inscription — " Chau- 

 tauqua Bottling Company," with a few long, 

 low buildings straggling off in odd directions — 

 this dismal and heterogeneous aggregation of 

 architecture, crowned with an east wind and 

 drizzling clouds, made me more lonesome than 

 if there had been no sign of human life with- 

 in a hundred miles. 



Escaping from the scene as soon as possible, 

 I wandered over to the beach on the south side. 

 The desolate, sandy stretches were buttered 

 thick — as if to make them more palatable — with 

 dense, low masses of bright yellow flowers, a 

 marine vegetation much resembling mossy stone- 

 crop. It was a marvel how any plant could 

 extract enough moisture from parched sand .to 

 break forth into such a rich display of bloom. 

 Where the ground began to rise, beyond the 

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