_Jamaica Plain, June_, 1889.
* * * I have had a pleasant visit at Nahant, but was no sooner there than
the air braced me so violently as to drive all the blood to my head. I
had headache two of the three days we were there, and yet I enjoyed my
stay very much. We had the rocks and piazzas to ourselves, and were on
sufficiently good terms not to destroy, if we could not enhance, one
another's pleasure.
The first night we had a storm, and the wind roared and wailed round
the house that Ossianic poetry of which you hear so many strains. Next
day was clear and brilliant, with a high north-west wind. I went out
about six o'clock, and had a two hours' scramble before breakfast. I
do not like to sit still in this air, which exasperates all my nervous
feelings; but when I can exhaust myself in climbing, I feel
delightfully,--the eye is so sharpened, and the mind so full of
thought. The outlines of all objects, the rocks, the distant sails,
even the rippling of the ocean, were so sharp that they seemed to
press themselves into the brain. When I see a natural scene by such a
light it stays in my memory always as a picture; on milder days it
influences me more in the way of reverie.
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