=314.= IMPRESSION OF A SEA SCENE.
The tide had been out, but it was now rising; and they stood silently watching the long, low waves dissolve in foam, whose white edges each time crept nearer and nearer their feet. No one was conscious of the duration of the silence. The sea's monotony of motion and sound seemed to fill the void, and lull them to quietude. But beautiful as was the scene that lay before her, Harvey gradually forgot it …
The two women had been nearly facing each other; and in a moment or two Harvey put his hand upon Rose's shoulder, and with the other, motioned her to look out upon the sea at her side. As she obeyed, her faint, inarticulate expression of surprise and pleasure made both men follow her example. It was only a coasting vessel, which had come rather close to the shore, and was sailing swiftly by, before the freshening breeze; but Its broad, white sails, with the moonlight upon them, and its gliding, soundless motion, gave it an unearthly effect, as of a phantom of light floating between the dark sea and sky, or a great white-winged spirit sweeping past. When it had vanished into the distance and darkness, Rose turned, and looked up at Harvey with mute but half-parted lips, with eyes dilating with light, only this for a moment, but Miss Barney knew she had accomplished her wish.
The others also did not speak. But Grahame made an involuntary angry movement of his foot upon the sand.
[Footnote 73: A young authoress of Maryland: has written two novels of unusual promise.]
* * * * *
=Mary Clemmer Ames,[74] about 1837-.=
From "A Woman's Right."
=315.= A RAILWAY DEPOT IN THE COUNTRY.
… Yet this depot was the centre of attraction for miles around. It was the grand hall of re-union for all the people of the scattered town, not second in importance even to the meeting-house. Here, twice a day, stopped the great Western and Eastern trains, the two fiery arteries through which flowed all the tumultuous life of the vast outer world that had ever come to this secluded hamlet. Its primitive inhabitants in their isolated farm-houses, under the hills and on the stony mountain-moors, could never have realized the existence of another world than the green, grand world of nature around them and above them, and would have been as oblivious of the great god "News" as the denizens of Greenland, if it had not been for the daily visits of this Cyclops with the burning eye. Now twice a day, the shriek of his diabolical whistle pierced the umbrageous woods and hilly gorges for miles away, and its cry to many a solitary household was the epoch of the day. Hearing it, John mounted his nag and scampered away to the station for the Boston journals of yesterday. Seth harnessed Peggy, and drove off in the buggy in all possible haste, to see if the mail had brought a letter from Amzi who was in New York, or from Nimrod who had gone to work in "Bosting," or if the train had brought Sally and her children from the city, who were expected home on a visit. Here, under pretext of waiting for the cars, congregated the drones and supernumeraries of the different neighborhoods, lounging on the steps, hacking the benches with their jack-knives for hours together, while they discussed politics, and talked over their own and their neighbors' affairs.