Wandering thus, all reckoning lost both of time and place, our white
man came out one evening unexpectedly upon a shore; before him was
water stretching away grayly in the fog-veiled moonlight; and so
successful had been his determined entangling of himself in the webs
of the wilderness, that he really knew not whether it was Superior,
Huron or Michigan that confronted him, for all three bordered on the
eastern end of the upper peninsula. Not that he wished to know;
precisely the contrary. Glorifying himself in his ignorance, he built
a fire on the sands, and leaning back against the miniature cliffs
that guard the even beaches of the inland seas, he sat looking out
over the water, smoking a comfortable pipe of peace, and listening
meanwhile to the regular wash of the waves. Some people are born with
rhythm in their souls, and some not; to Jarvis Waring everything
seemed to keep time, from the songs of the birds to the chance words
of a friend; and during all this pilgrimage through the wilderness,
when not actively engaged in quarrelling with the Spirit, he was
repeating bits of verses and humming fragments of songs that kept time
with his footsteps, or rather they were repeating and humming
themselves along through his brain, while he sat apart and listened.
At this moment the fragment that came and went apropos of nothing was
Shakespeare's sonnet,

'When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past.'

Now the small waves came in but slowly, and the sonnet in keeping time
with their regular wash, dragged its syllables so dolorously that at
last the man woke to the realisation that something was annoying him.