Shells From The Sea Shore Of Life (1858) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AN EARLY SHELL. New York in Dishabille. The city had got up before me, and had breakfasted and had commenced its day's work. The tall masts of the East River ships greeted my eyes with their parti-colored signals. The morning was bright, and the sun shone down upon housetops, which were as much strangers to me as if they had been built the night before, and I regarded them with as much astonishment. The sound of many waters from the ocean of the city rolled upon my ears with the deluge of mighty murmurs. The waves of the same streets I had buffeted the day before to find my struggling way in safety, were rolling their human billows, one upon another to their opposite shores. A STAMMERING SHELL. . The Language of Omnibuses. You have heard of the language of flowers. If a woman, of course yon have spoken it. Its fragrance, for that is its accent, often, I dare say, escapes from its source of your heart. A broken language, it may be, to you if you have passed the flower of your youth?a language traced to the Etymology of love and corrupted by the frose-idy of Life and the Sin- tax, of Matrimony. There is a new Grammar for you, ladies The Orthography you may correct to suit A STAMMERING SHELL. 27 your taste; and as that is said to be always good, perhaps you will excuse my spelling, if it is bad. Well, the Language of Omnibuses. Did it ever occur to you that everything has its language? Nothing is inarticulate. I have seen some faces speechless, but even their very bereavement of expression lent a sorrowful, sad voice, that filled the vacuum of their features. "Tongues in running brooks, sermons in stones," are as old as the hills and Shakspeare's genius. But the Language of Omnibuses?will I ever drive to it? I was beckoned at with the most singular hierogly...