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The young man arrived on the Massachusetts beach early carrying a radio, a shovel, and a strange set of tools: a brick layer’s trowel, a palette knife, spatulas, spoons, and a spray bottle.
He walked down near the water—the tide was out—put down the radio and tuned it to soft rock. Then he shoveled wet sand into a pile nearly four feet high and as many feet across. Then he created a rectangular(长方形的)shape.
After that, he set to work with palette knife, spatulas, and spoons. He shaped a graceful tower, topped walls, fashioned beautiful bay windows, and carved out big front gate.
The man knew his sand. He smoothly finished some surfaces and embroidered(雕刻)artistic designs on others. As the shapes began to dry, he gently kept them slightly wet with water from the spray bottle, in case they might break in the wind.
All this took hours. People gathered. At last he stood back, obviously satisfied with a castle worthy of the Austrian countryside or Disneyland.
Then he gathered his tools and radio and moved them up to drier sand. He had known for a while what many in the rapt(全神贯注的) crowd still overlooked: the tide was coming in. Not only had he practiced his art with confidence and style, he had done so against a powerful, immutable(不可抗拒的)deadline.
As the crowd looked on, water began to...