Page:The New Penelope.djvu/119

Rh I had come here just invalid enough to be benefited by our primitive style of living; not too delicate to endure it, nor too robust to enjoy the utter vagabondism of it. There had been no necessity upon us to ape fashionable manners; no obligation to dress three times a day; no balls to weary ourselves with at night. Therefore this daily recurring picnic was just sufficient for our physical recreation, while our mental powers took absolute rest. For weeks I had arisen every morning to a breakfast of salmon-trout. French coffee (au lait), delicious bread, and fresh berries; and afterwards to wander about in the cool sea-fog, well wrapped up in a water-proof cloak. Sometimes we made a boating party up the lovely Neah-can-a-cum, pulling our boat along under the overhanging alders and maples, frightening the trout into their hiding-places under the banks, instead of hooking them as was our ostensible design. The limpid clearness of the water seemed to reflect the trees from the very bottom, and truly made a medium almost as transparent as air, through which the pebbles at the greatest depth appeared within reach of our hands. A morning idled away in this manner, and an afternoon spent in seeing the bathers—I never trust my easily curdled blood to the chill of the sea—and in walking along the sands with a friend, or dreaming quietly by myself as I watched the surf rolling in all the way from Tilamook Head to Cape Disappointment,—these were my daily labors and recreations. The arrival of a bundle of letters, or, still better, of a new visitor, made what variety there was in our life.

I had both of these excitements in one day. One of my correspondents had written: "I hope to see you soon, and to have the opportunity, long sought, of telling you some of the experiences of my early life. When I promised you this I had not anticipated the pleasure of talking over the recollections of my youth while listening with you to the monotone of the great Pacific, whose 'ever, forever' is more significant to me than to most lovers of its music. I never