“It's one of those frosty and empty days at the beginning of winter when the color of gold seems silver and the silver fades to pewter. If the day was gloomy in hundreds of dreary offices and gaping drawing rooms, it looked even gloomier on the low-lying coast of Essex, where the monotonous plain was only occasionally broken by lanterns that looked less civilized than the trees, and trees even uglier than the lanterns. The stripes of melted snow, sealed with the seal of frost, also seemed leaden, not silver. Fresh snow had not yet fallen, and a dull ribbon of snow stretched along the very shore, parallel to the pale ribbon of sea foam...”