"
Many have been the times since those memorable days spent on the
old Shore Road; that memory of them gave for a moment a pleasure
more real than any we had experienced while strolling at will
along that scenic highway. Sometimes seemingly imaginary
delights are far from being imaginary. We can see the lovely
stretches of beach this moment and hear the breakers booming
among the granite boulders--yes, and the grating of the pebbles
that are being ground to shifting sand to form the beach.
Then, too, who can ever forget the exhilarating effect of a dip
in those waves? The great unfailing attraction of the place,
then as now, is the ocean, forever an emblem of unrest,
changeable in its unchangeableness. To our minds the ocean seems
alive. We could sooner believe in sirens and water-nymphs than
in many existences that are commonly spoken of as much more
certain "matters of fact." We could believe in them, we say, but
do not.
Our communings are not with any monster of the unfathomable
deeps of the ocean, but with the spirit of the ocean itself. It
grows somber and sullen under a leaden sky, and its voice has in
it something of that inexpressible sadness heard in the raging
wind among the pines. Then on a calm day in mid-summer how
placid and serene its water appears, wearing on its bosom that
exquisite blue bloom, like the haze that clothes distant
mountains.
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