My grandfather, who had voyaged even more widely than myself, always said
the same, and he was not a man given to windy talk, nor, indeed, as I have
said, to overmuch talk of any kind.

And for the opening of my eyes to the rare delight and full enjoyment of
the simple things of Nature, just as God has fashioned them with His
wonderful tools, the wind, the wave, and the weather, I have to thank my
mother, Rachel Carré, and my grandfather, Philip Carré,--for that and very
much more.

It has occurred to me at times, when I have been thinking over their lives
as I knew them,--the solitariness, the quietness, the seeming grayness and
dead levelness of them,--that possibly their enjoyment and apprehension of
the beauty of all things about them, the small things as well as the
great, were given to them to make up, as it were, for the loss of other
things, which, however, they did not seem to miss, and I am quite sure
would not have greatly valued. If they had been richer, more in the
world,--busier they hardly could have been, for the farm was but a small
one and not very profitable, and had to be helped by the fishing,--perhaps
they might not have found time to see and understand and enjoy those
simpler, larger matters. But some may look upon that as mere foolishness,
and may quote against me M. La Fontaine's fable about the fox and the
grapes. I do not mind. Their grapes ripened and were gathered, and mine are
in the ripening.

Sercq, in the distance, looks like a great whale basking on the surface of
the sea and nuzzling its young. That is a feature very common to our
Islands; for time, and the weather, and the ever-restless sea wear through
the softer veins, which run through all our Island rocks, just as