THE MINISTER’S WOOING.
Want of sympathy in nature.
The next day broke calm and fair. The robins sang remorselessly in the apple-tree, and were answered by bobolink, oriole, and a whole tribe of ignorant little bits of feathered happiness that danced among the leaves. Golden-glorious unclosed those purple eyelids of the east, and regally came up the sun; and the treacherous sea broke into a thousand smiles, laughing and dancing with every ripple, as unconsciously as if no form dear to human hearts had gone down beneath it. Oh, treacherous, deceiving beauty of outward things! beauty, wherein throbs not one answering nerve to human pain!
The sea.
And ever and anon came on the still air the soft, eternal pulsations of the distant sea,—sound mournfullest, most mysterious, of all the harpings of nature. It was the sea,—the deep, eternal sea,—the treacherous, soft, dreadful, inexplicable sea.