Lo, Michael!

Excerpt: ...when the grass was about it. His heart sank. "I don't know as we can ever do anything with the old shack," he said, shaking his head wistfully. "It looks worse than I thought." "'Tain't so bad," said Sam cheerfully. "Guess it's watertight." He placed a speculative eye at the dusty window pane he had wiped off with his coat sleeve. "Looks dry inside. 'Twould be a heap better'n sleepin' on de pavement fer some. Dat dere fire hole would take in a big lot o' wood an' I guess dere's a plenty round de place without robbin' de woods none." Michael led him to the seashore and bade him look. He wanted to see what effect it would have upon him. The coast swept wild and bleak in the cold December day, and Sam shivered in his thin garments. A look of awe and fear came into his face. He turned his back upon it. "Too big!" he said sullenly, and Michael understood that the sea in its vastness oppressed him. "Yes, there's a good deal of it," he admitted, "but after all it's sort of like the geranium flower." Sam turned back and looked. "H'm! I don't see nothin' like!" he grunted despairingly. "Why, it's wonderful! Its beyond us! We couldn't make it. Look at that motion! See the white tossing rim of the waves! See that soft green gray! Isn't it just the color of the little down on the geranium leaf? See the silver light playing back and forth, and look how it reaches as far as you can see. Now, doesn't it make you feel a little as it did when you first looked at the geranium?" Michael looked down at Sam from his greater height almost wistfully. He wanted him to understand, but Sam looked in vain. "Not fer mine!" he shrugged. "Gimme the posy every time." They walked in silence along the beach toward the flowing of the river, and Sam eyed the ocean furtively as if he feared it might run up and engulf them suddenly when they were not looking. He had seen the ocean from wharfs of course; and once stole a ride in a pilot boat out into the deep a little way; but he had...