The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Old Josselyn, who came to New England in 1638, has it among his
weather-signs, that "the resounding of the sea from the shore, and
murmuring of the winds in the woods, without apparent wind, sheweth wind
to follow."
Being on another part of the coast one night afterwards, I heard the
roar of the surf a mile distant, and the inhabitants said it was a sign
that the wind would work round east, and we should have rainy weather.
The ocean was heaped up somewhere at the eastward, and this roar was
occasioned by its effort to preserve its equilibrium, the wave reaching
the shore before the wind. Also the captain of a packet between this
country and England told me that he sometimes met with a wave on the
Atlantic coming against the wind, perhaps in a calm sea, which indicated
that at a distance the wind was blowing from an opposite quarter, but
the undulation had travelled faster than it. Sailors tell of "tide-rips"
and "ground-swells," which they suppose to have been occasioned by
hurricanes and earthquakes, and to have travelled many hundred, and
sometimes even two or three thousand miles.
Before sunrise the next morning they let us out again, and I ran over to
the beach to see the sun come out of the ocean. The old woman of
eighty-four winters was already out in the cold morning wind,
bare-headed, tripping about like a young girl, and driving up the cow to
milk. She got the breakfast with despatch, and without noise or bustle;
and meanwhile the old man resumed his stories.
After breakfast we looked at his clock, which was out of order, and
oiled it with some "hen's grease," for want of sweet oil, for he
scarcely could believe that we were not tinkers or peddlers; meanwhile
he told a story about visions, which had reference to a crack in the
clock-case made by frost one night. He was curious to know to what
religious sect we belonged. He said that he had been to hear thirteen
kinds of preaching in one month, when he was young, but he did not join
any of them,--he stuck to his Bible: there was nothing like any of them
in his Bible. While I was shaving in the next room, I heard him ask my
companion to what sect he belonged, to which he answered,--
"Oh, I belong to the Universal Brotherhood."
"What's that?" he asked,--"Sons o' Temperance?"
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