When the reunited Antins made
their stand there, however, there were no boulevards, no stately
bath-houses, no hotels, no gaudy amusement places, no illuminations, no
showmen, no tawdry rabble. There was only the bright clean sweep of
sand, the summer sea, and the summer sky. At high tide the whole
Atlantic rushed in, tossing the seaweeds in his mane; at low tide he
rushed out, growling and gnashing his granite teeth. Between tides a
baby might play on the beach, digging with pebbles and shells, till it
lay asleep on the sand. The whole sun shone by day, troops of stars by
night, and the great moon in its season.
Into this grand cycle of the seaside day I came to live and learn and
play. A few people came with me, as I have already intimated; but the
main thing was that _I_ came to live on the edge of the sea--I, who had
spent my life inland, believing that the great waters of the world were
spread out before me in the Dvina. My idea of the human world had grown
enormously during the long journey; my idea of the earth had expanded
with every day at sea, my idea of the world outside the earth now budded
and swelled during my prolonged experience of the wide and unobstructed
heavens.
Not that I got any inkling of the conception of a multiple world. I had
had no lessons in cosmogony, and I had no spontaneous revelation of the
true position of the earth in the universe. For me, as for my fathers,
the sun set and rose, and I did not feel the earth rushing through
space.
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