Let us bow reverently before this august fact.
The wanderer by the midnight seashore, when the moon—that argent cornucopia of heaven—is streaming forth her flowers and fruits of radiance, and the illimitable is illuminated by the ineffable, will have remarked the phosphorescent ridges that scintillate along the billows’ tops, until the breakers seem to curve and snort like horses’ necks with manes of lightning clad.
So, O man, when in the darkness of thine own chamber, thou passeth thine hand along the furry spine of this feline phantom of the back yard, the electric sparks dart forth, and a flash of lightning fuses together the fingers and the fur.
Exquisite antithesis of Nature! The fireside embraces the ocean. The hearthstone is paved with seashells. The monsters of the deep disport, reflected in the glowing embers. The infinite Abroad is brought into amalgamation with the finite at Home.
The ocean roars.
The cat only purrs.
The billows rise and culminate and break.
The cat’s back rises. The feline tide is up, and we have a permanent billow of fur and flesh.
O impossible co-existence of uncontradictory contradictions!
The duke of Wellington was pronounced the greatest captain of his age. Gen. Grant is pronounced the greatest captain of his.