Islands seemed to sit upon the tops of other islands, or to hang suspended in the air, and every distant shore became distorted in the brilliant July sunlight.
"That's the way a good many of us look at things in this life," said Skipper Ed.

"We see the mirage, and not the thing itself.

Hopes loom up and look real, when they're just false.

It's a great thing to be able to tell the differences between what is real and what is just a mirage." The wind fell away to a dead calm before noon, and though Abel and Skipper Ed worked at their heavy sculling oars, and Bobby and Jimmy and Mrs.Abel at the other oars, the boats, laden as they were, and retarded by the skiffs in tow, made such slow progress that at length they stopped at a convenient island to boil the kettle and cook their dinner and wait for a returning breeze.
Dinner was a jolly feast, simple as it was, for in this land folk live upon simple food and are satisfied with little variety, for their appetites and desires are not glutted, as ours so often are.

And many things that you and I deem necessary they do not miss, because they have never had them, and more often than not have never so much as heard of them.