Or I ran out to meet the incoming storm, my face full in the wind, my
being a-tingle with an awesome delight to the tips of my fog-matted
locks flying behind; and stood clinging to some stake or upturned boat,
shaken by the roar and rumble of the waves. So clinging, I pretended
that I was in danger, and was deliciously frightened; I held on with
both hands, and shook my head, exulting in the tumult around me, equally
ready to laugh or sob. Or else I sat, on the stillest days, with my back
to the sea, not looking at all, but just listening to the rustle of the
waves on the sand; not thinking at all, but just breathing with the sea.

Thus courting the influence of sea and sky and variable weather, I was
bound to have dreams, hints, imaginings. It was no more than this,
perhaps: that the world as I knew it was not large enough to contain
all that I saw and felt; that the thoughts that flashed through my
mind, not half understood, unrelated to my utterable thoughts, concerned
something for which I had as yet no name. Every imaginative growing
child has these flashes of intuition, especially one that becomes
intimate with some one aspect of nature. With me it was the growing
time, that idle summer by the sea, and I grew all the faster because I
had been so cramped before. My mind, too, had so recently been worked
upon by the impressive experience of a change of country that I was more
than commonly alive to impressions, which are the seeds of ideas.

Let no one suppose that I spent my time entirely, or even chiefly, in
inspired solitude. By far the best part of my day was spent in
play--frank, hearty, boisterous play, such as comes natural to American
children. In Polotzk I had already begun to be considered too old for
play, excepting set games or organized frolics. Here I found myself
included with children who still played, and I willingly returned to
childhood. There were plenty of playfellows. My father's energetic