A WIDE-REACHING AFFAIR.
“At the Lunch Stand” is Whittier’s “Barefoot Boy,” transferred to the city. His lips are not “redder still, kissed by strawberries on the hill;” nor may he be coated with “outward sunshine,” or full of “inner joy.” The luxurious bowl of milk and bread which our Quaker poet describes, is not his, even with the wooden dish and pewter spoon; but he seems happy for the moment with the cup of more or less hot coffee which he imbibes. His jaunty, independent attitude shows that he is bound to get all the good of his powerful and perhaps palatable beverage; that he earned it, and is entitled to it.
“The Street to the Sea” is in fact a picture of the sea, although the same is hardly in sight. Everything shows that we are approaching the great Country of the Waters. The villas in view; the wheel-harrowed road, admirably foreshortened; the deep shadows upon each side of the way; human figures looming faintly in the distance; everything, in fact, is somehow telling us a tale of the ocean, and we do not need our too sparse glimpse of the “solemn main” to tell what majestic voice will soon bring us to a halt; we almost smell the salt air.
“WHO’S THAT COMING?”
LEISURE.
The lazy fisherman who has hung out his latch-string and is waiting for a dinner to call upon him, is Perard with a godsend of material—of the kind he likes. There could scarcely be found a better wedding of shiftlessness and ingenuity. The primitive character of the man’s garments is apparently not due to the climate alone; he takes no thought of the morrow, and not much of the current day, so far as its temporal affairs are concerned. But the crude marks of mechanical ability are all over and around him; one suspender is induced, by its oblique trend, to do service for two; an elaborate coil of line gives opportunity of play for the largest of fin-bearers; the stick in the sand guarantees that his expected caller shall not go away without experiencing the fisherman’s peculiar hospitality; and there is considerable chance that if a “bite” occurs, the line will waken him, as it gradually warms the interstice between his toes.
McCLELLAN SADDLE.