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Footprints on the Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") by Nathaniel Hawthorne
page 11 of 13 (84%)
stifled laughter? It was musical,--but how should there be such music
in my solitude? Looking upwards, I catch a glimpse of three faces,
peeping from the summit of the cliff, like angels between me and their
native sky. Ah, fair girls, you may make yourselves merry at my
eloquence,--but it was my turn to smile when I saw your white feet in
the pool! Let us keep each other's secrets.

The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, except a gleam upon the
sand just where it meets the sea. A crowd of gloomy fantasies will
come and haunt me, if I tarry longer here, in the darkening twilight
of these gray rocks. This is a dismal place in some moods of the
mind. Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the
brink, gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have
been, what few can be, sufficient to our own pastime,-yes, say the
word outright!--self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome
looks the recess now, and dreary, too,--like all other spots where
happiness has been! There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine
with its head upon the sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! a
hit! I clap my hands in triumph, and see! my shadow clapping its
unreal hands, and claiming the triumph for itself. What a simpleton
must I have been all day,--since my own shadow makes a mock of my
fooleries!

Homeward! homeward! It is time to hasten home. It is time; it is
time; for as the sun sinks over the western wave, the sea grows
melancholy, and the surf has a saddened tone. The distant sails
appear astray, and not of earth, in their remoteness amid the desolate
waste. My spirit wanders forth afar, but finds no resting-place, and
comes shivering back. It is time that I were hence. But grudge me
not the day that has been spent in seclusion, which yet was not
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