第20章 NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES(4)

There were wonders everywhere.One day I picked up a star-fish on the beach (we called it a "five-finger"),and hung him on a tree to dry,not thinking of him as a living creature.When I went some time after to take him down he had elasped with two or three of his fingers the bough where I laid him,so that he could not be removed without breaking his hardened shell.My conscience smote me when I saw what an unhappy looking skeleton I had made of him.

I overtook the horse-shoe crab on the sands,but I did not like to turn him over and make him "say his prayers,"as some of the children did.I thought it must be wicked.And then he looked so uncomfortable,imploringly wriggling his claws while he lay upon his back!I believe I did,however,make a small collection of the shells of stranded horseshoe crabs deserted by their tenants.

There were also pretty canary-colored cockle-shells and tiny purple mussels washed up by the tide.I gathered them into my apron,and carried them home,and only learned that they too held living inhabitants by seeing a dead snail protruding from every shell after they had been left to themselves for a day or two.

This made me careful to pick up only the empty ones,and there were plenty of them.One we called a "butterboat";it had something shaped like a seat across the end of it on the inside.

And the curious sea-urchin,that looked as if he was made only for ornament,when he had once got rid of his spines,and the transparent jelly-fish,that seemed to have no more right to be alive than a ladleful of mucilage,--and the razor-shells,and the barnacles,and the knotted kelp,and the flabby green sea-aprons,--there was no end to the interesting things I found when I was trusted to go down to the edge of the tide alone.

The tide itself was the greatest marvel,slipping away so noiselessly,and creeping back so softly over the flats,whispering as it reached the sands,and laughing aloud "I am coming!"as,dashing against the rocks,it drove me back to where the sea-lovage and purple beach-peas had dared to root themselves.I listened,and felt through all my little being that great,surging word of power,but had no guess of its meaning.Ican think of it now as the eternal voice of Law,ever returning to the green,blossoming,beautiful verge of Gospel truth,to confirm its later revelation,and to say that Law and Gospel belong together."The sea is His,and He made it:and His hands formed the dry land."And the dry land,the very dust of the earth,every day revealed to me some new miracle of a flower.Coming home from school one warm noon,I chanced to look down,and saw for the first time the dry roadside all starred with lavender-tinted flowers,scarcely larger than a pin-head;fairy-flowers,indeed;prettier than anything that grew in gardens.It was the red sand-wort;but why a purple flower should be called red,I do not know.I remember holding these little amethystine blossoms like jewels in the palm of my hand,and wondering whether people who walked along that road knew what beautiful things they were treading upon.I never found the flower open except at noonday,when the sun was hottest.The rest of the time it was nothing but an insignificant,dusty-leaved weed,--a weed that was transformed into a flower only for an hour or two every day.It seemed like magic.