If melancholy accidents be the theme of conversation , I tell how a friend of mine was taken out of his boat by an enormous shark ; and the sad , true tale of a young man on the eve of marriage , who had been nine days missing , when his drowned body floated into the very pathway , on Marblehead Neck , that had often led him to the dwelling of his bride ; as if the dripping corpse would have come where the mourner was . With such awful fidelity did that lover return to fulfil his vows ! Another favorite story is of a crazy maiden , who conversed with angels and had the gift of prophecy , and whom all the village loved and pitied , though she went from door to door accusing us of sin , exhorting to repentance , and foretelling our destruction by flood or earthquake . If the young men boast their knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks , I speak of pilots , who knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its taste , and could have steered blindfold to any port between Boston and Mount Desert , guided only by the rote of the shore ; the peculiar sound of the surf on each island , beach , and line of rocks , along the coast . Thus do I talk , and all my auditors grow wise , while they deem it pastime . I recollect no happier portion of my life , than this , my calm old age . It is like the sunny and sheltered slope of a valley , where , late in the autumn , the grass is greener than in August , and intermixed with golden dandelions , that have not been seen till now , since the first warmth of the year . But with me , the verdure and the flowers are not frostbitten in the midst of winter . A playfulness has revisited my mind ; a sympathy with the young and gay ; an unpainful interest in the business of others ; a light and wandering curiosity ; arising , perhaps , from the sense that my toil on earth is ended , and the brief hour till bedtime may be spent in play . Still , I have fancied that there is a depth of feeling and reflection , under this superficial levity , peculiar to one who has lived long , and is soon to die . Show me anything that would make an infant smile , and you shall behold a gleam of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage . I can spend a pleasant hour in the sun , watching the sports of the village children , on the edge of the surf ; now they chase the retreating wave far down over the wet sand ; now it steals softly up to kiss their naked feet ; now it comes onward with threatening front , and roars after the laughing crew , as they scamper beyond its reach . Why should not an old man be merry too , when the great sea is at play with those little children ? I delight , also , to follow in the wake of a pleasure-party of young men and girls , strolling along the beach after an early supper at the Point . Here , with hand kerchiefs at nose , they bend over a heap of eel-grass , entangled in which is a dead skate , so oddly accoutred with two legs and a long tail , that they mistake him for a drowned animal . A few steps farther , the ladies scream , and the gentlemen make ready to protect them against a young shark of the dogfish kind , rolling with a life-like motion in the tide that has thrown him up . Next , they are smit with wonder at the black shells of a wagon-load of live lobsters , packed in rock-weed for the country market . And when they reach the fleet of dories , just hauled ashore after the day 's fishing , how do I laugh in my sleeve , and sometimes roar outright , at the simplicity of these young folks and the sly humor of the fishermen ! In winter , when our village is thrown into a bustle by the arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers , bargaining for frozen fish , to be transported hundreds of miles , and eaten fresh in Vermont or Canada , I am a pleased but idle spectator in the throng . For I launch my boat no more .
When the shore was solitary , I have found a pleasure that seemed even to exalt my mind , in observing the sports or contentions of two gulls , as they wheeled and hovered about each other , with hoarse screams , one moment flapping on the foam of the wave , and then soaring aloft , XXXXX their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine .
after against as at between from into over that till