Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/137

Rh roars around all and over all with such a superiority of power, that it is not worth any one's while to set themselves up in opposition to it, or to be as anything beside it; the sea dashes over them all, dashes them all about, enlivens them all, caresses them all, purifies them all, unites them all.

Among the citizens in the billows you must particularly notice one couple, a citizen in grand flame-coloured attire, and a citizeness in a brown, cabbage-butterfly-striped woollen gown. The citizeness distinguishes herself by her propensity to withdraw from the crowd to some solitary place, by her wish to be independent, and her inability to keep her footing against the waves; and these waves hurl her pitilessly enough upon a sandbank, where she is left alone to her own powers and a trident (a three-grained fork), with which she endeavours to keep herself firm on the ground, but in vain; while the citizen goes back to take out his wife. This couple are Professor Hart and the undersigned. Presently you might see me rise up out of the water, tired of struggling with the waves and being dashed on the bank—now sitting upon it like a sea-mew, surrounded by white-crested, tumultuous billows—now contemplating the ocean and infinite space, and now that parti-coloured company among the waves by the shore,—very unlike that in the Capitol of Washington! Here human beings do not appear great, nor remarkable in any way, and more like ungraceful, clumsy beasts than the lords and ladies of creation, because the garments in which they are attired are not designed to set off beauty.

I was at first almost frightened at the undertaking and the company, and at the unlovely, apparent rudeness of this kind of republic; but I longed for the strength of the sea, and thought, “We are all as nothing before our Lord, all of us sinners, poor wretches all of us!” And I went out among the rest. And though I am not yet as much at home among the waves as I see many others are, yet I