From "The Romance of Beauseincourt."
=308.= VIEW OF THE SKY BY NIGHT.
I had derived great and constant pleasure from the undisturbed possession of this place of promenade during my whole sojourn…. Often, when my mind had been distracted with anxious cares, I had literally waited down its excitement and anguish in my fierce and rapid movements to and fro, over its smooth painted floor, the daily care of Sylphy, who might be heard in the hot season busily employed in refreshing it with mop and broom and water during the first hours of the morning, the pleasant, dewy freshness of which operation might be felt gratefully in the atmosphere of our heated chamber.
The long gallery was very solitary, of course, at an hour like this, and it was with a feeling of calm relief that I paced its lonely length, stopping at intervals to look out upon the night; one of cloudy sultriness, occasionally relieved by gusts of warm, damp wind, that bore the distant odors of swamp and forest on its wings, and promised speedy rain. Here and there in the dappled heavens were liquid purple spaces, like the open sea described by Arctic voyagers, around which hung masses of silvery clouds, projecting like ice cliffs; and into these patches of sky the large yellow moon would now and then sail majestically, suddenly emerging, like a ship from a fog, from the fleecy screen that veiled her light, to cross these spaces, and plunge into mist and shadow again.
There was something in the whole effect calculated to absorb the mind of an absent dreamer, intent on the future, and for the first time for many weeks putting aside all foreign considerations, in favor of self too long merged in others and neglected.
[Footnote 70: One of our most accomplished female writers; a native of
Mississippi, but long resident in Kentucky.]
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=Herman Melville, 1819-.= (Manual, p. 505.)
From "Moby Dick."