as if I were spending a day at the seaside."

"Well," said her nephew, "I shouldn't call this exactly a watering-place.
It lacks the splendor and gayety of Newport, in a certain degree, and it
hasn't the illustrious seclusion of Nahant. The surf isn't very fine, nor
the beach particularly adapted to bathing; and yet, I must confess, the
outlook from here is as lovely as anything one need have."

And to tell the truth, it was very pretty and interesting. The landward
environment was as commonplace and mean as it could be: a yardful of
dismal sheds for coal and lumber, and shanties for offices, with each
office its safe and its desk, its whittled arm-chair and its spittoon, its
fly that shooed not, but buzzed desperately against the grimy pane, which,
if it had really had that boasted microscopic eye, it never would have
mistaken for the unblemished daylight. Outside of this yard was the usual
wharfish neighborhood, with its turmoil of trucks and carts and fleet
express-wagons, its building up and pulling down, its discomfort and
clamor of every sort, and its shops for the sale, not only of those
luxuries which Lucy had mentioned, but of such domestic refreshments as
lemon-pie and hulled-corn.

When, however, you turned your thoughts and eyes away from this aspect of
it, and looked out upon the water, the neighborhood gloriously retrieved
itself. There its poverty and vulgarity ceased; there its beauty and grace
abounded. A light breeze ruffled the face of the bay, and the innumerable
little sail-boats that dotted it took the sun and wind upon their wings,
which they dipped almost into the sparkle of the water, and flew lightly
hither and thither like gulls that loved the brine too well to rise wholly
from it; larger ships, farther or nearer, puffed or shrank their sails as
they came and went on the errands of commerce, but always moved as if bent