THE GREAT SEA-SERPENT. 89 morning dream. You would see the heights of the oppo- - site shore as green as Eden, and you would see the dingy sails of two or three dozen idle little schooners, lighting up as if they were made of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, . in the lifting mist; and you would see the mist itself, as if you saw a veil of burning lace thrown over the rocks, — to keep them from freckling, you wonder. And you would see strange colors on the rocks and in the stranded weeds, and strange boys splashing barefoot in the colors, and people fishing as if they fished for fancies, and sailing as if they sailed in their own thoughts, and bathing as if they bathed in sunbeams; and more boys on the beach, walking on their heads (Barnum was here week before last), and more boys yet paddling crazy boats about after crazy drift-wood, and more boys besides (poor little fellows!) away out in the solemn black School Ship, down on its July trip, lying silent and guarded, out by the reef of Norman’s Woe. In fact, you would see so many boys, that the only natural thing about the Great Serpent would seem to be that he was discovered by a boy. It happened on an August morning, in the year 1817; and my only regret about that is, that my birthday came a little later in the month, or I might have seen it myself, before I undertook to tell you about it, and then where would the Society of Camphorated Caterpillars have been ? It happened off the very rock on which I sit to write. It is an island, this rock, at least when the tide is in; and there