Its scale of color runs from
flint to emerald, and when it turns to blue, the blue is a turquoise
shade splashed with gray. The sea here is not amusing itself; it has a
busy and serious air, like an Englishman or a Dutchman. Neither polyps
nor jelly-fish, neither sea-weed nor crabs enliven the sands at low
water; the sea life is poor and meagre. What is wonderful is the
struggle of man against a miserly and formidable power. Nature has done
little for him, but she allows herself to be managed. Stepmother though
she be, she is accommodating, subject to the occasional destruction of a
hundred thousand lives in a single inundation.
The air inside the dune is altogether different from that outside it.
The air of the sea is life-giving, bracing, oxydized; the air inland is
soft, relaxing, and warm. In the same way there are two Hollands in
every Dutchman: there is the man of the _polder_, heavy, pale,
phlegmatic, slow, patient himself, and trying to the patience of others,
and there is the man of the _dune_, of the harbor, the shore, the sea,
who is tenacious, seasoned, persevering, sunburned, daring. Where the
two agree is in calculating prudence, and in methodical persistency of
effort.
August 22, 1873. (_Scheveningen_).--The weather is rainy, the whole
atmosphere gray; it is a time favorable to thought and meditation.
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