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 had not been seen till now since the first warmth of the year . But with me the verdure and the flowers are not frost-bitten 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 handkerchiefs 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 lifelike 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 till their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine . In the calm of the summer sunset I drag my aged limbs with a little ostentation of activity , because I am so old , up to the rocky brow of the hill .
There I see the white sails of many a vessel outward bound or homeward from afar , and the black trail of a vapor behind the Eastern steamboat ; there , too , is the sun , going down , but not XXXXX gloom , and there the illimitable ocean mingling with the sky , to remind me of eternity .
For Next as between by in like of than that