Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/11



Any one who knows the coast of New England will know also the Island of Appledore and just where it lies. Such a person can tell you that it is not exactly the place described in  this book, that it is small and bare and rocky  with no woods, no meadows, no church, or  mill, or mill-creek road. Perhaps all that the story tells of it that is true is that there the  rocks give forth their strange deep song, “the  calling of Appledore,” as warning of a storm,  that there the poppies bloom as nowhere else  in the world, that there the surf comes rolling  in, day in and day out, the whole year through,  and that there one’s memory turns back with  longing, no matter how many years of absence  have gone by.

There, also, you can sit for hours to watch the huge, green breakers come foaming and  tumbling in endless procession up the stony  beach; you can watch the nimble sandpipers  and the tireless, wheeling gulls; and if you