"Along the wharves, along the little beaches, around the circuit of the little coves, along the smooth or broken face of rock, the sea, which cannot rest, is busy. These little waves and this long swell, that now are here at work, have been ere now at home in the great inland sea of Europe, breathed on by soft, warm winds from fruit-groves, vineyards, and wide fields of flowers,--have sparkled in the many-colored lights, and felt the trivial oars and dallying fingers of the loiterers, on the long canals of Venice,--have quenched the ashes of the Dutchman's pipe, thrown overboard from his dull, laboring _treckschuyt_,--have wrought their patient tasks in the dim caverns of the Indian Archipelago,--have yielded to the little builders under water means and implements to rear their towering altar, dwelling, monument. "These little waves have crossed the ocean, tumbling like porpoises at play, and, taking on a savage nature in the Great Wilderness, have thundered in close ranks and countless numbers against man's floating fortress,--have stormed the breach and climbed up over the walls in the ship's riven side,--have followed, howling and hungry as mad wolves, the crowded raft,--have leaped upon it, snatching off, one by one, the weary, worn-out men and women,--have taken up and borne aloft, as if on hands and shoulders, the one chance human body that is brought in to land, and the long spur, from which man's dancing cordage wastes by degrees, find yields its place to long, green streamers, much like those that clung to this tall, taper tree when it stood in the Northern forest. "These waves have rolled their breasts about amid the wrecks and weeds of the hot stream that comes up many thousands of miles out of the Gulf of Mexico, as the great Mississippi goes down into it, and by-and-by these waves will move, all numb and chilled, among the mighty icebergs and ice-fields that must be brought down from the poles." * * * * * "She asked, 'Have you given up being a priest, Mr. Urston?' "'Yes!' he answered, in a single word, looking before him, as it were along his coming life, like a quoit-caster, to see how far the uttered word would strike; then, turning to her, and in a lower voice, added, 'I've left that, once and forever.'" * * * * *