I shall never forget a vast and glowing sunset-scene I
once witnessed in the Ohio Valley. It lasted but a few moments, but
what a spectacle! The setting sun was throwing his golden light over
the intensely green earth, and suffusing the irregular masses of clouds
now with a tender rosy light and now with delicate saffron. All along
the eastern horizon extended a black-blue cloud-curtain of about twenty
degrees in height, across which played the zigzag gold of the
lightning. Overhead hung the gigantic ring of a complete rainbow (a
rare phenomenon), looking like the iridescent rim of some vast sun that
had shot from its orbit and was rapidly nearing our earth. In the north
the while slept the sweet blue sky in peace. What a phantasmagoria of
splendor, "the magic-lantern of Nature"! What a rich contrast of
color!--the black and the gold, the green, saffron, rose and azure, and
the whole crowned with a rainbow garland of glowing flowers. I felt
assured that no sunset of Italy or Greece could fling upon the sky more
costly pictures than these.
The delicacy and accuracy of touch exhibited in _The Scarlet Letter_
and in _Oldport Days_ can hardly be appreciated to the full by those
who are unacquainted with certain mellow and crumbling towns and
hamlets of the New England coast, especially of the warm south coast.
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