CHAPTER XIII.
A MILD WINTER ON THE CAPE.
"It's be'n a mild winter on the Cape;" the Wallencampers congratulated
one another, blinking, with a delicious sense of warmth and comfort, in
the rays of a strong March sun.
The Wallencampers were not, perhaps, generally incited by that love of
stern, unceasing, and vigorous exertion which is, geographically
considered, one of the chief characteristics of our hardy northern races.
True poets and idealists, they were lazy, and they had but few clothes,
both excellent reasons for inclining kindly to the warm weather.
And yet, notwithstanding this, they had grown used to a wild ruggedness
of nature and condition, a terrible, sublime uncertainty about life and
things in general when the wind blew, missing which, in this earthly
state, they would have pined most sadly. And I do not believe that they
would have exchanged their rugged, storm-swept, wind-beleaguered little
section of Cape Cod for a realm in sunny Italy itself; no, not even if
the waves of that bright clime had rippled over sands of literal gold,
and their winter had been nine months in the year instead of the
customary six and a half.
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