Young and strong and fresh,
their imaginations thronging with pictures of vigorous action and
adventure, buccaneering, filibustering, and all the swing, the
leap, the rush and gallop, the exuberant, strong life of the
great, uncharted world of Romance.
And all unknowingly they were a Romance in themselves. Cynicism,
old age, and the weariness of all things done had no place in the
world in which they walked. They still had their illusions, all
the keenness of their sensations, all the vividness of their
impressions. The simple things of the world, the great, broad,
primal emotions of the race stirred in them. As they swung along,
going toward the ocean, their brains were almost as empty of
thought or of reflection as those of two fine, clean animals.
They were all for the immediate sensation; they did not think--
they FELT. The intellect was dormant; they looked at things, they
heard things, they smelled the smell of the sea, and of the
seaweed, of the fat, rank growth of cresses in the salt marshes;
they turned their cheeks to the passing wind, and filled their
mouths and breasts with it. Their life was sweet to them; every
hour was one glad effervescence. The fact that the ocean was blue
was a matter for rejoicing. It was good to be alive on that royal
morning. Just to be young was an exhilaration; and everything was
young with them--the day was young, the country was young, and the
civilization to which they belonged, teeming there upon the green,
Western fringe of the continent, was young and heady and
tumultuous with the boisterous, red blood of a new race.
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