you made me tremble again . When the flame quivered , my sweet Susan , you quivered with it and grew indistinct , as if melting into the warm light , that my last glimpse of you might be as visionary as the first was , full many a year since . Do you remember it ? You stood on the little bridge over the brook that runs across King 's Beach into the sea . It was twilight , the waves rolling in , the wind sweeping by , the crimson clouds fading in the west and the silver moon brightening above the hill ; and on the bridge were you , fluttering in the breeze like a sea-bird that might skim away at your pleasure . You seemed a daughter of the viewless wind , a creature of the ocean-foam and the crimson light , whose merry life was spent in dancing on the crests of the billows that threw up their spray to support your footsteps . As I drew nearer I fancied you akin to the race of mermaids , and thought how pleasant it would be to dwell with you among the quiet coves in the shadow of the cliffs , and to roam along secluded beaches of the purest sand , and , when our Northern shores grew bleak , to haunt the islands , green and lonely , far amid summer seas . And yet it gladdened me , after all this nonsense , to find you nothing but a pretty young girl sadly perplexed with the rude behavior of the wind about your petticoats . Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days , dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues before I could see her as she really was . Now , Susan , for a sober picture of our village . It was a small collection of dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the sea with the rock-weed and marine plants that it vomits after a storm , or to have come ashore among the pipe-staves and other lumber which had been washed from the deck of an Eastern schooner . There was just space for the narrow and sandy street between the beach in front and a precipitous hill that lifted its rocky forehead in the rear among a waste of juniper-bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture . The village was picturesque in the variety of its edifices , though all were rude . Here stood a little old hovel , built , perhaps , of driftwood , there a row of boat-houses , and beyond them a two-story dwelling of dark and weatherbeaten aspect , the whole intermixed with one or two snug cottages painted white , a sufficiency of pig-styes and a shoemaker 's shop . Two grocery stores stood opposite each other in the centre of the village . These were the places of resort at their idle hours of a hardy throng of fishermen in red baize shirts , oilcloth trousers and boots of brown leather covering the whole leg -- true seven-league boots , but fitter to wade the ocean than walk the earth . The wearers seemed amphibious , as if they did but creep out of salt water to sun themselves ; nor would it have been wonderful to see their lower limbs covered with clusters of little shellfish such as cling to rocks and old ship-timber over which the tide ebbs and flows . When their fleet of boats was weather-bound , the butchers raised their price , and the spit was busier than the frying-pan ; for this was a place of fish , and known as such to all the country round about . The very air was fishy , being perfumed with dead sculpins , hard-heads and dogfish strewn plentifully on the beach . -- You see , children , the village is but little changed since your mother and I were young .
How XXXXX a dream it was when I bent over a pool of water one pleasant morning and saw that the ocean had dashed its spray over me and made me a fisherman !
As for like nearer on over since than though with