I wonder if all the things we long to see--the churches, the pictures, the men in Europe--will disappoint us so! You see I had dreamed of it so long.

When I was a little boy, minding sheep behind the kopje, I used to see the waves stretching out as far as the eye could reach in the sunlight.

My sea! Is the idea always more beautiful than the real?
"I got to the beach that afternoon, and I saw the water run up and down on the sand, and I saw the white foam breakers; they were pretty, but I thought I would go back the next day.

It was not my sea.
"But I began to like it when I sat by it that night in the moonlight; and the next day I liked it better; and before I left I loved it.

It was not like the sky and stars, that talk of what has no beginning and no end; but it is so human.