“Parker spent two weeks on the white sand beach at Biloxi, and on a white sandy bitch named Belle.”

“Fraj-ile," I say, pronouncing it the way she does - as if it might be a popular tourist destination in the Pacific, beautiful Fraj Isle, with its white sandy beaches and shark-filled coves.”

“Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the manufacturers.”

“That narrow stretch of sand knows nothing in the world better than it does the white waves that whip it , caress it , collapse on to it . The white foam knows nothing better than those sands which wait for it , rise to it and suck it in .but what do the waves know of the massed, hot, still sands of the desert just twenty , no , ten feet beyond the scalloped edge ? And what does the beach knows of depths, the cold, the currents just there, where-do you see it? - Where the water turns a deeper blue.”

“I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.”

“And then, some morning in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense—no—but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. One never knows what chance treasures these easy unconscious rollers may toss up, on the smooth white sand of the conscious mind; what perfectly rounded stone, what rare shell from the ocean floor. Perhaps a channeled whelk, a moon shell, or even an argonaut.”