They Were Tormented And Crazed
By The Two Most Powerful Instincts Of Birds Pulling In
Opposite Directions - The Parental Instinct And The Passion Of
Migration Which Called Them To The South.
In such weather, especially on that naked desolate coast,
exposed to the fury of the winds, one marvels at
Our modern
craze for the sea; not merely to come and gaze upon and listen
to it, to renew our youth in its salt, exhilarating waters and
to lie in delicious idleness on the warm shingle or mossy
cliff; but to be always, for days and weeks and even for
months, at all hours, in all weathers, close to it, with its
murmur, "as of one in pain," for ever in our ears.
Undoubtedly it is an unnatural, a diseased, want in us, the
result of a life too confined and artificial in close dirty
overcrowded cities. It is to satisfy this craving that towns
have sprung up everywhere on our coasts and extended their
ugly fronts for miles and leagues, with their tens of
thousands of windows from which the city-sickened wretches may
gaze and gaze and listen and feed their sick souls with the
ocean. That is to say, during their indoor hours; at other
times they walk or sit or lie as close as they can to it,
following the water as it ebbs and reluctantly retiring before
it when it returns. It was not so formerly, before the
discovery was made that the sea could cure us.
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