Fog

“ I could not go abroad in snow—it would settle on me and expose me. Rain, too, would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man—a bubble. And fog—I should be like a fainter bubble in a fog, a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. ”

“ A fog would sometimes hang all day over the landscape like a curtain, veiling every distant object from view, the dampness that everywhere prevailed making you feel cold and chilly, and everything you touched moist and clammy. ”

“ At sea a fog is a natural phenomenon. It is as familiar as the rainbow which follows a storm, it is as proper that a fog should spread upon the waters as that steam shall rise from a kettle. But a fog which springs from the paved streets, that rolls between solid house-fronts, that forces cabs to move at half speed, that drowns policemen and extinguishes the electric lights of the music-hall, that to me is incomprehensible. ”

“ The fog at length yielded, and became less dense, and we found ourselves not a hundred and fifty yards from the rugged frozen ridge of a field of ice, on which Were monstrous masses,—one of them resembling a castle—with a water blink stretching across the horizon. About noon the fog had totally subsided, and from the stillness of the day and the brightness of the sun, the surface of the ocean like a most dazzling mirror, reflected the perfect representation of the four ships in company, every rope in which was distinctly exhibited. ”

“ Nothing can be more chilling to the imagination than the idea of fog, yet I have seen exquisite sights in a night fog; not in a pervading, durable mist, but in such a fog as is common at sea, thick and driving, with spaces through which the moon may shine down, making clusters of silvery islands on every side. This was an entirely new appearance to me, and the white archipelago was a spectacle of great beauty. ”

“ A vast bedlam of sound flies up to my window, and above all is the immense whistling of unseen and unfelt winds.
"The fog has again swept over the city and the whistling is coming closer and closer.
"It is now directly beneath me.
"God! An instant ago the mist opened and I caught a glimpse of the streets below.
"The fog is not simply vapor -- it lives! By the side of each moaning and weeping human is a companion figure, an aura of strange and vari-colored hues. How the shapes cling! Each to a living thing!
"The men and women are down. Flat on their faces. The fog figures caress them lovingly. ”

“ When the fog slinks down from Labrador, stealthy, sure, and slow !
Oh, men of the fleet, ’t is ye who learn, of the white fog’s biting breath,
That life may hang on the way ye turn, or the way ye turn be death! ”

“ After a night of fog signals, I awoke this morning to find it still foggy and the ground covered with a grey rime. All day the fog has remained: I look out now thro' the yellowish atmosphere across a field which is frosted over, the grass and brambles stiff and glassy. My back is aching and the cold is so intense that unless I crouch over the fire hands and feet become immediately stone-cold. All day I have crouched over the fire, reading newspapers, listening to fog signals and the screaming of the baby.... ”

“ Here, when the fog is piled up in gloomy masses over Blomidon, and the sun is setting behind them, may be seen a spectacle so gorgeous that, if it could be portrayed on canvas, few would believe it to be a copy of nature. ”

“ Yet all the time, through all the seasons, while field and flood, river and mountain, sea and forest, are thus changing their aspect, there hangs over all an atmosphere which brings changes more wonderful than these. The fog is forever struggling for an entrance here. The air in an instant may bring forth its hidden watery vapors. High over Blomidon the mist banks are piled, and roll and writhe at the blast of the winds from the sea. ”

“ But there come days also when the fog spreads itself like a close gray blanket, under which the ground, with its mounds and bushes and heather, creeps stealthily, disappearing a few yards away. And out of the fog comes a fine, mist-like rain, which deposits itself in tiny gray beads on every blade and every pine needle, so that wherever any one goes there is a little sprinkling of water. ”

“ Above the peak the great mass of fog spread to the farthest mountains, letting their highest tops shine through with a pale-blue faintness like that of sky. But the great back of the long slope was distinct, and of a vivid green against the background of violet mountains. ”

“ No wind: fog flows in where the wind is not. Under the fog, no weakening of the rolling invisible currents that could drag man's creation into the snag teeth of a reef or against the crushing mass of a dead hulk. ”

“ From below the fog seems to gradually grow warmer and to be dissolved in its own moisture. The frost that crisped underfoot before the mists began to shiver together in the lowlands now glistens as dew under the yellow sun. The day warms toward the noon and we note with satisfaction what a perfect one it is. ”

“ The dunes like white elephants restfully asleep after the chase;
And the fog comes to bring the moon its veil of shades.
The waves stretch their phosphorescent arms
To embrace the night,
The wind like a wounded gull beats its wings
Over the land, over the sea, into the fog-vested intangibility. ”

“ It is a desolate place, and is made more so by the clouds coming down and completely damping us and the view. It is rather dreary jogging along with these human ponies in a dense mist, out of which loom palely the foremost bearers, when, as suddenly as we came into it, the fog lifted, leaving us the most beautiful cloud effects of white filmy vapours, trailing low down on the mountain side, with a patch of blue sky just beginning to show, and the sun shining up there behind those opaque masses of cloud and mist, making them appear so fleecy and transparent. ”

“ As the sharp, still night wears on, the light mists begin to rise, and when the morning breaks, the river is buried in a deep, dense bank of fog. A gentle wave of air bears it landward; its progress is stayed by everything with which it comes in contact, and as soon as its motion is arrested it freezes sufficiently to adhere to whatever it touches. ”

“ The fog, which in the early morning hesitated whether to roll off and give us one of those beautiful, bright autumn days, the more precious because we feel they are gliding so rapidly from us, or to come down in rain, seems to have decided at last, and a dreary, drenching rain is the result. ”

“ We take a last view of our surroundings, note the direction we should follow, and try to fix details in our memories, for sight will soon be impossible. Then the clouds themselves are upon us—a puff of mist first, followed by the dense fog. A crepitating sound arises around us; it is the pattering of hard particles of snow on the ground. ”

“ Even more beautiful and fairy-like, if possible, is the garment of frozen fog with which all external objects are adorned and etherealized when the spring advances and the temperature of the water is raised. ”

“ The fog when it rests upon the earth has little effect upon the growth of its wheat fields and gardens, but let it rise into the canopy above, gather into cloud, and drop in the form of rain, and all earth springs at once into new beauty and bloom. ”

“ With a couple of strokes the shore vanished, and nothing could be seen but fog. Rowing where there is plenty of light and yet nothing visible is embarrassing business. One must rely wholly upon the sense of hearing, as eyes are of no use in such a case. Fearing that the bell might cease before I got across, I bent with a will upon the oars and went racing through the fog. ”

“ Sometimes, as in the early morning, when the wind is most quiet, it may be seen as a kind of fog bank resting on the sea-wall mountains or rolling down landward through the interstices of their summits. ”

“ Already it had begun to freeze; and I, so familiar both with white and black frost, observed with no small interest the grey or fog-frost, which was new to me. How different from the pure whiteness when the stars are sparkling, and the earth is gleaming, and the spirit of man so buoyant! This grey fog-frost is rather depressing to most natures, and a chilly damp creeps to the core of all things. ”

“ Fog-youths are coming, right in front of the fog they are coming.
“Where the water stands straight up, next to him, the water people are coming to us. With water-downy-feathers as their feathers they are coming to us; holding the lightning in their hands they are coming to us. ”

“ The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. ”

“ THE FOG.
"What is the fog, Mamma?" "Sometimes the air is light And cannot bear up all the mists, And then 'tis foggy, quite; But when air heavier grows, The fog is borne above, And floated off, the cloudy stuff,-- Just see it, graceful, move."
{108}
THE RAIN.
"What makes the rain, Mamma?" "The mists and vapors rise From land and stream and rolling sea, Up toward the distant skies; And there they form the clouds, Which, when they're watery, dear, Pour all the water down to earth, And rain afar or near."
THE SNOW.
"What makes the Snow, Mamma?" ”

“ Now fog is a thing that I understand, and can do with well enough, where I know the country; but here I had never been before. It was nothing to our Exmoor fogs; not to be compared with them; and all the time one could see the moon; which we cannot do in our fogs; nor even the sun, for a week together. Yet the gleam of water always makes the fog more difficult: like a curtain on a mirror ”

“ The fog has gone. The city has popped back and sprawls triumphantly into space. For a moment it seems as if the city had sprung up in an hour. Then its sturdy walls and business windows begin to mock at the memory of the fog in my mind. "Fogs do not devour us," they say. "We are the ones who do the devouring. We devour fogs and people and days." ”

“ It is no uncommon occurrence on summer afternoons, when the wind is blowing at the rate of twenty-two miles an hour, to see sharply marked fog drifts hang like white blankets over the city hills or stream through the Golden Gate like a spectral army. ”

“ The long swaths they were now mowing lay in direction to and from the ocean, and the place where the bouts ended and the indispensable jug stood in readiness, chanced to be so situated with reference to the gap between the hills that it afforded a view directly out upon the sea. The nature of the fog made this view more or less indistinct, at times shutting it entirely out of sight. Here the wind would bank up the fog, twist it into fantastic shapes, and blow them all away, only to summon more of the pliant medium and heap it up again into more grotesque masses. ”

“ But even now I still feel in my right shoulder that incomprehensibly sweet pain of I-330 near me in the fog, pressing herself against me. “Thou lovest fog?” Yes, I love the fog, too. I love everything, and everything appears to me wonderful, new, tense; everything is so good! ”

“ The old landmarks, by whose disappearance I had measured its advance, here a crag, there a brave pine tree, now began, in the inverse order, to make their reappearance into daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. ”

“ We still ascend, however, through the compact and terrible fog, which is so solid-looking as to seem capable of being carved into forms with a knife. As we were without a moon, and had no light at all, in fact, we were unable to distinguish nicely the different shades of colour in these thick clouds. ”

“ Sometimes the fog is every where; sometimes it hangs only just over the water. If you are on a very high hill, where you can look off and see a river in the distance, you can sometimes see in the morning a line of fog stretching along where the river is, while it is nowhere else. I once saw a very singular and beautiful scene made by the fog. ”

“ AT THE HELM (Nova Scotia)
Fog, and a wind that blows the sea
Blindly into my eyes.
And I know not if my soul shall be
When the day dies.
But if it be not and I lose
All that men live to gain—
I who have known but heaving hues
Of wind and rain—
Still I shall envy no man's lot,
For I have held this great,
Never in whines to have forgot
That Fate is Fate.
[Pg 100]
IMPERTURBABLE
Three times the fog rolled in today, a silent shroud,
From which the breakers ran like ghosts, moaning and tumbling.
Three times a startled sea-bird cried aloud,
On the wind stumbling. ”

“ It has for complement or for relief the blackness of clouds which suddenly melt away in transient showers, the grayness of scattered and ragged banks of fog, the vague, bluish network enveloping distances, the sparkling of flickering light arrested in flying scuds sometimes the dazzling satin of a motionless cloud, or some abrupt opening through which the azure penetrates. ”

“ A fog is always made by influences from below. A lowering temperature chills the air, and brings down its moisture in the shape of a gray subtle pervasive mist, that blurs the outlook, and often gathers and holds black smoke, and mean poisonous odors and gases from bog and swamp. ”

“ And the vigorous vegetation which constantly takes place there, furnishes such a prodigious quantity of vapour that all the night, and great part of the morning, a thick fog covers the whole country, and continues till either the sun gathers strength to dissipate it, or it is dispersed by a brisk sea-breeze. ”

“ A fog almost every morning, chilly, damp, and all-pervading, mournful surroundings made more mournful by the incessant tolling of the bell-buoy rocking on the dangerous bar, the muffled crash of [Page 95] surf on a sandy shore and the periodical boom of the detonator from the signal-station. Then, when Father Sol has vanquished mist and fog, an hour or two of intense heat, and the glare from white sand and burnished sea and sky sufficient to blind one ”