On the day of my last ramble—­it was a September day, yet as warm as summer—­what should I behold as I approached the above-described basin but three girls sitting on its margin and—­yes, it is veritably so—­laving their snowy feet in the sunny water?  These, these are the warm realities of those three visionary shapes that flitted from me on the beach.  Hark their merry voices as they toss up the water with their feet!  They have not seen me.  I must shrink behind this rock and steal away again.

In honest truth, vowed to solitude as I am, there is something in this encounter that makes the heart flutter with a strangely pleasant sensation.  I know these girls to be realities of flesh and blood, yet, glancing at them so briefly, they mingle like kindred creatures with the ideal beings of my mind.  It is pleasant, likewise, to gaze down from some high crag and watch a group of children gathering pebbles and pearly shells and playing with the surf as with old Ocean’s hoary beard.  Nor does it infringe upon my seclusion to see yonder boat at anchor off the shore swinging dreamily to and fro and rising and sinking with the alternate swell, while the crew—­four gentlemen in roundabout jackets—­are busy with their fishing-lines.  But with an inward antipathy and a headlong flight do I eschew the presence of any meditative stroller like myself, known by his pilgrim-staff, his sauntering step, his shy demeanor, his observant yet abstracted eye.

From such a man as if another self had scared me I scramble hastily over the rocks, and take refuge in a nook which many a secret hour has given me a right to call my own.  I would do battle for it even with the churl that should produce the title-deeds.  Have not my musings melted into its rocky walls and sandy floor and made them a portion of myself?  It is a recess in the line of cliffs, walled round by a rough, high precipice which almost encircles and shuts in a little space of sand.  In front the sea appears as between the pillars of a portal; in the rear the precipice is broken and intermixed with earth which gives nourishment not only to clinging and twining shrubs, but to trees that grip the rock with their naked roots and seem to struggle hard for footing and for soil enough to live upon.  These are fir trees, but oaks hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns on the beach, and shed their withering foliage upon the waves.  At this autumnal season the precipice is decked with variegated splendor.  Trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of yellow-flowering shrubs and rose-bushes, with their reddened leaves and glossy seed-berries, sprout from each crevice; at every glance I detect some new light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the stern gray rock.  A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a little cistern near the base.  I drain it at a draught, and find it fresh and pure.  This recess shall be my dining-hall.  And what the feast?  A few biscuits made savory by soaking them in sea-water, a tuft of samphire gathered from the beach, and an apple for the dessert.  By this time the little rill has filled its reservoir again, and as I quaff it I thank God more heartily than for a civic banquet that he gives me the healthful appetite to make a feast of bread and water.