all discernible, will guide us with an observing consciousness through
every unconscious wandering of thought and fancy. Here we followed
the surf in its reflux, to pick up a shell which the sea seemed loath
to relinquish. Here we found a sea-weed, with an immense brown leaf,
and trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk. Here we seized
a live horseshoe by the tail, and counted the many claws of the queer
monster. Here we dug into the sand for pebbles, and skipped them upon
the surface of the water. Here we wet our feet while examining a
jelly-fish, which the waves, having just tossed it up, now sought to
snatch away again. Here we trod along the brink of a fresh-water
brooklet, which flows across the beach, becoming shallower and more
shallow, till at last it sinks into the sand, and perishes in the
effort to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some vagary
appears to have bewildered us; for our tracks go round and round, and
are confusedly intermingled, as if we had found a labyrinth upon the
level beach. And here, amid our idle pastime, we sat down upon almost
the only stone that breaks the surface of the sand, and were lost in
an unlooked-for and overpowering conception of the majesty and
awfulness of the great deep. Thus, by tracking our footprints in the
sand, we track our own nature in its wayward course, and steal a
glance upon it, when it never dreams of being so observed. Such
glances always make us wiser.

This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant pastime. With
your staff you may write verses--love-verses, if they please you best
--and consecrate them with a woman's name. Here, too, may be inscribed
thoughts, feelings, desires, warm out-gushings from the heart's secret
places, which you would not pour upon the sand without the certainty
that, almost ere the sky has looked upon them, the sea will wash them
out. Stir not hence till the record be effaced. Now--for there is