Sand castles are well enough, and they are the very commonplace of the
recollections of elders, of their rhetoric, and of what they think
appropriate for their young ones. Shingle and sand are good playthings,
but absolute play is not necessarily the ideal of a child; he would
rather have a frolic of work. Of all the early autumn things to be done
in holiday time, that game with the beach and the wave is the least good
for holiday-time.
Not that the shore is everywhere so barren. The coast of the
Londoners--all round the southern and eastern borders of England--is
indeed the dullest of all sea-margins. But away in the gentle bays of
Jersey the summer grows a crop of seaweed which the long ocean wave
leaves in noble curves upon the beach; for under sunny water the storms
have gathered the crops. The Channel Island people go gleaning after the
sea, and store the seaweed for their fields. Thus the beaches of Jersey
bays are not altogether barren, and have a kind of dead and accessory
harvest for the farmer. After a night of storm these crops are stacked
and carted and carried, the sea-wind catching away loose shreds from the
summits of the loads.
Further south, if the growth of the sea is not so put to use, the shore
has yet its seasons. You could hardly tell, if you did not know the
month, whether a space of sea or a series of waves, at Aldborough, say,
or at Dover, were summer or winter water; but in those fortunate regions
which are southern, yet not too southern for winter, and have thus the
strongest swing of change and the fullest pulse of the year, there are a
winter sea and a summer sea, brilliantly different, with a delicate
variety between the hastening blue of spring and the lingering blue of
September.
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