Whittaker Chambers on the Long Island of his youth

"Inland, too, the sea was always around us. Sometimes it came as fog, rolling in suddenly, heavy with the smell of tidal water, softly blotting out the houses and the streets. Sometimes it came as sound— the terrible sound of the surf pouring without pause on the beaches seven miles away. As a boy, I used to hear it while I tried to fall asleep. I would sit up in my bed to listen to it, on winter nights when the cold air brought it in clearly. I was frightened, for it seemed about to pound away the land. It was the sound of inhuman force— the first I knew."

--Whittaker Chambers, "Witness," page 94