Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/439

 The small, greenish, rough-coated creature, so like a flattened burr, is an Echinus. It is hardly domiciliated, being a new-comer, and creeps restlessly across the glass.

Under this sand-mound some one lies self-buried, not dead, but only hiding from the crowd in this bustling watering-place. He must learn that there is no lasting retirement in Newport; so tap with a stick at his lodging. With anger vexed, forth rushes the Swimming-Crab and dashes away from the unwelcome visitor. As if he knew a bore to be the most persistent of hunters, he plies his paddles with rapid beat until far from his invaded chamber. His swimming is more like the fluttering of a butterfly than the steady poise of a fish. Pretty as is his variegated coat by day, it is far more beautiful by night; then his limbs shine with metallic lustre, and every joint seems tinged with molten gold.

I could spend the day in showing you my Aquarium;—the merry antics of the blithe Minnows; the slow wheeling of the less vivacious Sticklebacks; the beautiful siphon of the Quahaug and the Clam; the starry disk of the Serpula; the snug tent of the Limpet; the lithe proboscis of the busy Buccinum; the erect and rapid march of his little flesh-tinted cousin; the slow Horsefoot, balancing his huge umbrella as he goes; the But I cannot name them all.

Neither could you learn to know them at a single visit. Come and sit by this indoor sea, day by day, and learn to love its people. Many a lesson for good have they taught me. When weary and disheartened, the patient perseverance of these undoubting beings has given me new impulses upward and onward. Remembering that their sole guide is instinct, while mine is the voice behind me, saying, "This is the way," I have risen with new resolve to walk therein. Seeing the blind persistency with which some straying zoöphyte has refused to follow other counsel than its own, I have learned that self-reliance and strength of will are not, in higher natures, virtues for gratulation, but, if unsanctified, faults to blush for. Finding each creature here so fitted with organs and instincts for the life it was meant to lead, I have considered that to me also is given all that I ought to wish, more than I have ever rightly used.

New evidences are here disclosed to me of God's care for his creation, deepening my faith in the fact that he is not merely the great First Cause, but still the watchful Father. New revelations teach me of his sympathy in our joys, as well as of his care for our necessities. The Maker's love of the beautiful fills me with gladness, and I catch new glimpses of those boundless regions where the perfection of his conceptions has never been marred by sin; and where each of us who may attain thereto shall find a fitting sphere for every energy, an answering joy for every pure aspiration.

box of chessmen had been left open all night. That was a great oversight! For everybody knows that the contending chessmen are but too eager to fight their battles over again by midnight, if a chance is only allowed them.

It was at the Willows,—so called, not because the house is surrounded by willows, but because a little clump of them hangs over the pond close by. It is a pretty place, with its broad lawn in front of the door-way, its winding avenue hidden from the road by high trees. It is a quiet place, too; the sun rests gently