scramble--for we often do scramble in a very undignified manner--through
the thickets of life; and, feeling the thorns, we grumble, and are blind
to all but the thorns. The flowers, and the lovely leaves, and the red
berries, and the clusters of filberts, and the birds'-nests do not force
themselves upon our attention as the thorns do, and the thorns make us
forget to look for them. But a scratch would be forgotten--and that in
mental hurts is often equivalent to a cure, for a forgotten scratch on the
mind or heart will never fester--if we but allowed our being a moment's
repose upon any of the quiet, waiting, unobtrusive beauties that lie
around the half-trodden way, offering their gentle healing. And when I
think how, not unfrequently, otherwise noble characters are anything but
admirable when under the influence of trifling irritations, the very
paltriness of which seems what the mind, which would at once rouse itself
to a noble endurance of any mighty evil, is unable to endure, I would
gladly help so with sweet antidotes to defeat the fly in the ointment of
the apothecary that the whole pot shall send forth a pure savour. We ought
for this to cultivate the friendships of little things. Beauty is one of
the surest antidotes to vexation. Often when life looked dreary about me,
from some real or fancied injustice or indignity, has a thought of truth
been flashed into my mind from a flower, a shape of frost, or even a
lingering shadow--not to mention such glories as angel-winged clouds,
rainbows, stars, and sunrises. Therefore I hope that in my loving delay
over such aspects of Nature as impressed themselves upon me in this most
memorable part of my history I shall not prove wearisome to my reader, for
therein I should utterly contravene my hope and intent in the recording of
them.

This day there was to be an unusually low tide, and we had reckoned on
enlarging our acquaintance with the bed of the ocean--of knowing a few
yards more of the millions of miles lapt in the mystery of waters. It was