And beside this folly and wildness of youth, perchance there was something, I know not what, of the joy we have in uncertainty.

Mother, in fear of my missing home--though for that matter, I could smell supper, when hungry, through a hundred land-yards of fog--my dear mother, who thought of me ten times for one thought about herself, gave orders to ring the great sheep-bell, which hung above the pigeon-cote, every ten minutes of the day, and the sound came through the plaits of fog, and I was vexed about it, like the letters of a copy-book.

It reminded me, too, of Blundell's bell, and the grief to go into school again.
But during those two months of fog (for we had it all the winter), the saddest and the heaviest thing was to stand beside the sea.

To be upon the beach yourself, and see the long waves coming in; to know that they are long waves, but only see a piece of them; and to hear them lifting roundly, swelling over smooth green rocks, plashing down in the hollow corners, but bearing on all the same as ever, soft and sleek and sorrowful, till their little noise is over.
One old man who lived at Lynmouth, seeking to be buried there, having been more than half over the world, though shy to speak about it, and fain to come home to his birthplace, this old Will Watcombe (who dwelt by the water) said that our strange winter arose from a thing he called the 'Gulf-stream', rushing up Channel suddenly.

He said it was hot water, almost fit for a man to shave with, and it threw all our cold water out, and ruined the fish and the spawning-time, and a cold spring would come after it.