As I advanced they flew a score or two of yards , and , again alighting , recommenced their dalliance with the surf-wave ; and thus they bore me company along the beach , the types of pleasant fantasies , till at its extremity they took wing over the ocean and were gone . After forming a friendship with these small surf-spirits , it is really worth a sigh to find no memorial of them save their multitudinous little tracks in the sand . When we have paced the length of the beach , it is pleasant and not unprofitable to retrace our steps and recall the whole mood and occupation of the mind during the former passage . Our tracks , being all discernible , will guide us with an observing consciousness through every unconscious wandering of thought and fancy . Here we followed the surf in its reflux to pick up a shell which the sea seemed loth to relinquish . Here we found a seaweed with an immense brown leaf , and trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk . Here we seized a live horseshoe by the tail , and counted the many claws of that queer monster . Here we dug into the sand for pebbles , and skipped them upon the surface of the water . Here we wet our feet while examining a jelly-fish which the waves , having just tossed it up , now sought to snatch away again . Here we trod along the brink of a fresh-water brooklet which flows across the beach , becoming shallower and more shallow , till at last it sinks into the sand and perishes in the effort to bear its little tribute to the main . Here some vagary appears to have bewildered us , for our tracks go round and round and are confusedly intermingled , as if we had found a labyrinth upon the level beach . And here amid our idle pastime we sat down upon almost the only stone that breaks the surface of the sand , and were lost in an unlooked-for and overpowering conception of the majesty and awfulness of the great deep . Thus by tracking our footprints in the sand we track our own nature in its wayward course , and steal a glance upon it when it never dreams of being so observed . Such glances always make us wiser . This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant pastime . With your staff you may write verses -- love-verses if they please you best -- and consecrate them with a woman 's name . Here , too , may be inscribed thoughts , feelings , desires , warm outgushings from the heart 's secret places , which you would not pour upon the sand without the certainty that almost ere the sky has looked upon them the sea will wash them out . Stir not hence till the record be effaced . Now -LRB- for there is room enough on your canvas -RRB- draw huge faces -- huge as that of the Sphynx on Egyptian sands -- and fit them with bodies of corresponding immensity and legs which might stride halfway to yonder island . Child 's - play becomes magnificent on so grand a scale .
But , after all , the most fascinating employment is simply to XXXXX your name in the sand .
Stir becoming counted paced please retrace track trod wandering write