plumaged in satiny lilac and silken green, found their food,--and
where the best reeds grew to furnish stems for Feliu's red-clay
pipe,--and where the ruddy sea-beans were most often tossed upon
the shore,--and how the gray pelicans fished all together, like
men--moving in far-extending semicircles, beating the flood with
their wings to drive the fish before them.

And from Carmen she learned the fables and the sayings of the
sea,--the proverbs about its deafness, its avarice, its
treachery, its terrific power,--especially one that haunted her
for all time thereafter: Si quieres aprender a orar, entra en el
mar (If thou wouldst learn to pray, go to the sea). She learned
why the sea is salt,--how "the tears of women made the waves of
the sea,"--and how the sea has ii no friends,"--and how the
cat's eyes change with the tides.

What had she lost of life by her swift translation from the dusty
existence of cities to the open immensity of nature's freedom?
What did she gain?

Doubtless she was saved from many of those little bitternesses
and restraints and disappointments which all well-bred city
children must suffer in the course of their training for the more
or less factitious life of society:--obligations to remain very
still with every nimble nerve quivering in dumb revolt;--the
injustice of being found troublesome and being sent to bed early
for the comfort of her elders;--the cruel necessity of straining
her pretty eyes, for many long hours at a time, over grimy desks
in gloomy school-rooms, though birds might twitter and bright
winds flutter in the trees without;--the austere constrains