She kindled a domestic fire within my heart and took up her dwelling there , even in that chill and lonesome cavern hung round with glittering icicles of fancy . She gave me warmth of feeling , while the influence of my mind made her contemplative . I taught her to love the moonlight hour , when the expanse of the encircled bay was smooth as a great mirror and slept in a transparent shadow , while beyond Nahant the wind rippled the dim ocean into a dreamy brightness which grew faint afar off without becoming gloomier . I held her hand and pointed to the long surf-wave as it rolled calmly on the beach in an unbroken line of silver ; we were silent together till its deep and peaceful murmur had swept by us . When the Sabbath sun shone down into the recesses of the cliffs , I led the mermaid thither and told her that those huge gray , shattered rocks , and her native sea that raged for ever like a storm against them , and her own slender beauty in so stern a scene , were all combined into a strain of poetry . But on the Sabbath-eve , when her mother had gone early to bed and her gentle sister had smiled and left us , as we sat alone by the quiet hearth with household things around , it was her turn to make me feel that here was a deeper poetry , and that this was the dearest hour of all . Thus went on our wooing , till I had shot wild-fowl enough to feather our bridal-bed , and the daughter of the sea was mine . I built a cottage for Susan and myself , and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic arch by setting up a whale 's jaw-bones . We bought a heifer with her first calf , and had a little garden on the hillside to supply us with potatoes and green sauce for our fish . Our parlor , small and neat , was ornamented with our two profiles in one gilt frame , and with shells and pretty pebbles on the mantelpiece , selected from the sea 's treasury of such things on Nahant Beach . On the desk , beneath the looking-glass , lay the Bible , which I had begun to read aloud at the book of Genesis , and the singing-book that Susan used for her evening psalm . Except the almanac , we had no other literature . All that I heard of books was when an Indian history or tale of shipwreck was sold by a pedler or wandering subscription-man to some one in the village , and read through its owner 's nose to a slumbrous auditory . Like my brother-fishermen , I grew into the belief that all human erudition was collected in our pedagogue , whose green spectacles and solemn phiz as he passed to his little schoolhouse amid a waste of sand might have gained him a diploma from any college in New England . In truth , I dreaded him . -- When our children were old enough to claim his care , you remember , Susan , how I frowned , though you were pleased at this learned man 's encomiums on their proficiency . I feared to trust them even with the alphabet : it was the key to a fatal treasure . But I loved to lead them by their little hands along the beach and point to nature in the vast and the minute -- the sky , the sea , the green earth , the pebbles and the shells . Then did I discourse of the mighty works and coextensive goodness of the Deity with the simple wisdom of a man whose mind had profited by lonely days upon the deep and his heart by the strong and pure affections of his evening home . Sometimes my voice lost itself in a tremulous depth , for I felt his eye upon me as I spoke .
Once , while my wife and all of us were gazing at ourselves in the mirror left by the tide XXXXX a hollow of the sand , I pointed to the pictured heaven below and bade her observe how religion was strewn everywhere in our path , since even a casual pool of water recalled the idea of that home whither we were travelling to rest for ever with our children .
Except as at by for in like though till while