and feed the sea. Wherever I appear they bow to our lord the Winter."

And to his arrogant boasting nothing said the fog. Only he rose up
slowly and trailed away from the sea and, crawling up long valleys,
took refuge among the hills; and night came down and everything was
still, and the fog began to mumble in the stillness. And I hear him telling
infamously to himself the tale of his horrible spoils. "A hundred and
fifteen galleons of old Spain, a certain argosy that went from Tyre,
eight fisher-fleets and ninety ships of the line, twelve warships under
sail, with their carronades, three hundred and eighty-seven river-craft,
forty-two merchantmen that carried spice, thirty yachts, twenty-one
battleships of the modern time, nine thousand admirals...." he mumbled
and chuckled on, till I suddenly rose and fled from his fearful
contamination.




THE RAFT-BUILDERS


All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon
doomed ships.

When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity
with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile
upon Oblivion's sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our
names and a phrase or two and little else.

They that write as a trade to please the whim of the day, they are like