Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/70

Rh the land, the vast continent of North America, lay behind me, and before me the great Gulf of Mexico, with its unfathomable depth, the Southern Sea, with its islands.

The dark-blue, almost black-blue, colour of the water struck me greatly. I was told that it is occasioned by the extreme depth. The heavens, with their soft, white summer clouds, arched themselves light-blue over the dark-blue sea, which heaved and roared joyfully before the fresh, warm summer wind. Oh, how beautiful it was! I inhaled the breeze, and life, and rested from thought and talk, and everything which was not a portion of the beautiful life of the moment. The sea! the sea has in itself an inexpressibly rest-giving, healing, and regenerating power. If thou wilt commence within thyself, and without, a new life—cross the sea. Let the air and the life of the sea bathe thy soul for days and weeks. Everything becomes new and fresh upon the sea.

Thus did I live the first day on the sea; thus did I live the second also. Now, however, I enjoyed a book at the same time, Browning's tragedy, “The Return of the Druses,” the lofty thought and the life-warm spirit of which was in harmony with the spectacle around me; I inhaled from both the boundless, the great and the profound, and if during all this there came one and another gentleman with the inquiry, “How do you like America?” or with a request for an autograph, it was only like a fly buzzing past ear and thought.

There was, however, one gentleman on board who was more agreeable and attentive to me than the others were disturbing. The same polite gentleman who had constituted himself my cavalier at the time of our disaster on Lake Pontchartrain, who conducted me to the beautiful garden at night, and afterwards to New Orleans, was now on board on his way to Cuba, seeking for a milder climate than that of the United States during winter. This gentleman, Mr. V., is middle-aged, with a noble and good