like the lamps in the basin of St. Mark, between the Maine and New
Hampshire coasts.

There was a dash of rain, and we thought the storm had begun; but that
ended it, as so many times this summer a dash of rain has ended a storm.
The morning came veiled in a fog that kept the shipping at anchor through
the day; but the next night the weather cleared. We woke to the clucking
of tackle, and saw the whole fleet standing dreamily out to sea. When
they were fairly gone, the summer, which had held aloof in dismay of the
sudden cold, seemed to return and possess the land again; and the
succession of silver days and crystal nights resumed the tranquil round
which we thought had ceased.




I.

One says of every summer, when it is drawing near its end, "There never
was such a summer"; but if the summer is one of those which slip from the
feeble hold of elderly hands, when the days of the years may be reckoned
with the scientific logic of the insurance tables and the sad conviction
of the psalmist, one sees it go with a passionate prescience of never
seeing its like again such as the younger witness cannot know. Each new
summer of the few left must be shorter and swifter than the last: its
Junes will be thirty days long, and its Julys and Augusts thirty-one, in
compliance with the almanac; but the days will be of so small a compass
that fourteen of them will rattle round in a week of the old size like
shrivelled peas in a pod.