Oldport Days | Page 8

schooner that is not so employed is, to my eye, more
attractive than any of them; it is our sole winter guest, this year, of all
the graceful flotilla of yachts that helped to make our summer
moonlights so charming. While Europe seems in such ecstasy over the
ocean yacht-race, there lies at anchor, stripped and dismantled, a vessel
which was excluded from the match, it is said, simply because neither
of the three competitors would have had a chance against her. I like to
look across the harbor at the graceful proportions of this uncrowned
victor in the race she never ran; and to my eye her laurels are the most
attractive. She seems a fit emblem of the genius that waits, while talent

merely wins. "Let me know," said that fine, but unappreciated thinker,
Brownlee Brown,--"let me know what chances a man has passed in
contempt; not what he has made, but what he has refused to make,
reserving himself for higher ends."
All out-door work in winter has a cheerful look, from the triumph of
caloric it implies; but I know none in which man seems to revert more
to the lower modes of being than in searching for seaclams. One may
sometimes observe a dozen men employed in this way, on one of our
beaches, while the cold wind blows keenly off shore, and the spray
drifts back like snow over the green and sluggish surge. The men pace
in and out with the wave, going steadily to and fro like a pendulum,
ankle-deep in the chilly brine, their steps quickened by hope or
slackening with despair. Where the maidens and children sport and
shout in summer, there in winter these heavy figures succeed. To them
the lovely crest of the emerald billow is but a chariot for clams, and is
valueless if it comes in empty. Really, the position of the clam is the
more dignified, since he moves only with the wave, and the immortal
being in fish-boots wades for him.
The harbor and the beach are thus occupied in winter; but one may
walk for many a mile along the cliffs, and see nothing human but a few
gardeners, spreading green and white sea-weed as manure upon the
lawns. The mercury rarely drops to zero here, and there is little snow;
but a new-fallen drift has just the same virgin beauty as farther inland,
and when one suddenly comes in view of the sea beyond it, there is a
sensation of summer softness. The water is not then deep blue, but pale,
with opaline reflections. Vessels in the far horizon have the same
delicate tint, as if woven of the same liquid material. A single wave
lifts itself languidly above a reef,--a white-breasted loon floats near the
shore,--the sea breaks in long, indolent curves,--the distant islands
swim in a vague mirage. Along the cliffs hang great organ-pipes of ice,
distilling showers of drops that glitter in the noonday sun, while the
barer rocks send up a perpetual steam, giving to the eye a sense of
warmth, and suggesting the comforts of fire. Beneath, the low tide
reveals long stretches of golden-brown sea-weed, caressed by the
lapping wave.
High winds bring a different scene. Sometimes I fancy that in winter,
with less visible life upon the surface of the water, and less of unseen

animal life below it, there is yet more that seems like vital force in the
individual particles of waves. Each separate drop appears more charged
with desperate and determined life. The lines of surf run into each other
more brokenly, and with less steady roll. The low sun, too, lends a
weird and jagged shadow to gallop in before the crest of each
advancing wave, and sometimes there is a second crest on the shoulders
of the first, as if there were more than could be contained in a single
curve. Greens and purples are called forth to replace the prevailing blue.
Far out at sea, great separate mounds of water rear themselves, as if to
overlook the tossing plain. Sometimes these move onward and subside
with their green hue still unbroken, and again they curve into detached
hillocks of foam, white, multitudinous, side by side, not ridged, but
moving on like a mob of white horses, neck overarching neck, breast
crowded against breast.
Across those tumultuous waves I like to watch, after sunset, the
revolving light; there is something about it so delicate and human. It
seems to bud or bubble out of the low, dark horizon; a moment, and it
is not, and then another moment, and it is. With one throb the
tremulous light is born; with another throb it has reached its full size,
and looks at you, coy and defiant; and almost in that instant it is