However, Fanny took most of this
trouble off our hands, though there was inevitably the stiffness and
discomfort of a new housekeeping on the first day of our arrival; besides
that, it was cool, and the wind whistled and grumbled and eddied into the
chinks of the house.
Meanwhile, in all my experience of Southport, I have never yet seen the
sea, but only an interminable breadth of sands, looking pooly or plashy
in some places, and barred across with drier reaches of sand, but no
expanse of water. It must be miles and miles, at low water, to the
veritable sea-shore. We are about twenty miles north of Liverpool, on
the border of the Irish Sea; and Ireland and, I suppose, the Isle of Man
intervene betwixt us and the ocean, not much to our benefit; for the air
of the English coast, under ocean influences, is said to be milder than
when it comes across the land,--milder, therefore, above or below
Ireland, because then the Gulf Stream ameliorates it.
Betimes, the forenoon after our arrival, I had to take the rail to
Liverpool, but returned, a little after five, in the midst of a rain,--
still low water and interminable sands; still a dreary, howling blast.
We had a cheerful fireside, however, and should have had a pleasant
evening, only that the wind on the sea made us excessively drowsy. This
morning we awoke to hear the wind still blustering, and blowing up
clouds, with fitful little showers, and soon blowing them away again, and
letting the brightest of sunshine fall over the plashy waste of sand.
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