I liked the look that it had of honest solidity all
over, nothing anywhere scamped in the workmanship of it. It looked as
though it had been built for all time. But this was not so. For it was
built on sand, and of sand; and the tide was coming in.
Here and there in its vicinity stood other buildings. None of these
possessed any points of interest. They were just old-fashioned
`castles,' of the bald and hasty kind which I myself used to make in
childhood and could make even now--conic affairs, with or without
untidily-dug moats, the nullities of convention and of unskilled
labour. When I was a child the charm of a castle was not in the
building of it, but in jumping over it when it was built. Nor was this
an enduring charm. After a few jumps one abandoned one's castle and
asked one's nurse for a bun, or picked a quarrel with some child even
smaller than oneself, or went paddling. As it was, so it is. My survey
of the sands this morning showed me that forty years had made no
difference. Here was plenty of animation, plenty of scurrying and
gambolling, of laughter and tears. But the actual spadework was a mere
empty form. For all but the builder of that cottage. For him,
manifestly, a passion, a rite.
He stood, spade in hand, contemplating, from one angle and another,
what he had done.
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