To-day, as I was reading in the garden, a waft of summer perfume--some
hidden link of association in what I read--I know not what it may have
been--took me back to school-boy holidays; I recovered with strange
intensity that lightsome mood of long release from tasks, of going away
to the seaside, which is one of childhood's blessings. I was in the
train; no rushing express, such as bears you great distances; the sober
train which goes to no place of importance, which lets you see the white
steam of the engine float and fall upon a meadow ere you pass. Thanks to
a good and wise father, we youngsters saw nothing of seaside places where
crowds assemble; I am speaking, too, of a time more than forty years ago,
when it was still possible to find on the coasts of northern England,
east or west, spots known only to those who loved the shore for its
beauty and its solitude. At every station the train stopped; little
stations, decked with beds of flowers, smelling warm in the sunshine
where country-folk got in with baskets, and talked in an unfamiliar
dialect, an English which to us sounded almost like a foreign tongue.
Then the first glimpse of the sea; the excitement of noting whether tide
was high or low--stretches of sand and weedy pools, or halcyon wavelets
frothing at their furthest reach, under the sea-banks starred with
convolvulus. Of a sudden, _our_ station!
Ah, that taste of the brine on a child's lips! Nowadays, I can take
holiday when I will, and go whithersoever it pleases me; but that salt
kiss of the sea air I shall never know again. My senses are dulled; I
cannot get so near to Nature; I have a sorry dread of her clouds, her
winds, and must walk with tedious circumspection where once I ran and
leapt exultingly. Were it possible, but for one half-hour, to plunge and
bask in the sunny surf, to roll on the silvery sand-hills, to leap from
rock to rock on shining sea-ferns, laughing if I slipped into the
shallows among starfish and anemones! I am much older in body than in
mind; I can but look at what I once enjoyed.