Sea-Ports

A sea-port is a pleasant place for a soul worn out with life's struggles. The wide expanse of sky, the mobile clouds, the ever changing colors of the sea, the flashing beams of the light-houses form a prism marvelously designed to gladden, without ever tiring the eye. The ships with their long slim lines and complicated rigging that so gracefully ride the swells, serve to keep alive in the soul a taste for rhythm and beauty. And, above all, for the man who has lost all curiousity, all ambition, there is a sort of mysterious and aristocratic pleasure, in watching, as he reclines in the belvedere or leans on the mole, all the bustle of people leaving, of people returning, people who still have enough energy to have desires, who still desire to voyage, who still desire to get rich.