and gusty though it be, and the north wind, like any miller, bolting by
the snow, in finest flour--for then, once more, with frosted beard, I
pace the sleety deck, weathering Cape Horn.

In summer, too, Canute-like, sitting here, one is often reminded of the
sea. For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and
little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as their
beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and
the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and a
still August noon broods upon the deep meadows, as a calm upon the Line;
but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so oceanic, and the silence
and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house, rising
beyond the trees, is for all the world like spying, on the Barbary
coast, an unknown sail.

And this recalls my inland voyage to fairy-land. A true voyage; but,
take it all in all, interesting as if invented.

From the piazza, some uncertain object I had caught, mysteriously
snugged away, to all appearance, in a sort of purpled breast-pocket,
high up in a hopper-like hollow, or sunken angle, among the northwestern
mountains--yet, whether, really, it was on a mountain-side, or a
mountain-top, could not be determined; because, though, viewed from
favorable points, a blue summit, peering up away behind the rest, will,
as it were, talk to you over their heads, and plainly tell you, that,
though he (the blue summit) seems among them, he is not of them (God
forbid!), and, indeed, would have you know that he considers
himself--as, to say truth, he has good right--by several cubits their
superior, nevertheless, certain ranges, here and there double-filed, as
in platoons, so shoulder and follow up upon one another, with their