Read "Within the Gates" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Dull daylight falls upon a wide and desolate expanse. This has the appearance of a desert -- unbroken and arid. The horizon is low and heavy with cloud, and is defined by a tossing sea-line against which no sail appears. In the distance are cliffs, fissured by dark cuts, but these are far away, and the foreground is flat like sand or ashes, or it might be corrugated like slag. There is no vegetation visible, and no sign of organized life.
_Enter_ DR. THORNE. (_He paces the sands, mournfully gazing about him at the lonely scenery. He murmurs, then raises his voice rhythmically, like one who quotes from an uncertain memory._)