Page 27 - 1918 February - To Dragma

120 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

I want you to know something of the lives of these children—lives
so meagre when compared with those of our own boys and girls; and
I have chosen to tell you of those who live at the Maine light-stations,
partly because of a l l our coastlines that of Maine requires the most
lights, and largely because through the kindness of Rev. Alexander
MacDonald of the Maine Seacoast Mission I was so fortunate as to
be one of a party of five who this summer on a wondrous voyage
of discovery learned to know something of these especial light-
children, and to understand a little the increased loneliness of their
narrow lives. We could not go to them because of the war regula-
tions, but, the sea permitting, they could row out to the Sunbeam and
to us where we lay at anchor, and forget for an hour that every day
was the same while they listened to our stories, our songs, and our
"little fiddler."

Maine has seventy-three lights in a l l . Their great, wide-open,
watchful eyes sweep the sea from Boone Island Light near York
Beach, whose great shaft of 210 feet is the highest on the coast, to
Avery Rock off Machiasport, whose half acre of land affords all too
little space for the children who must play thereon. Some, like Bass
Harbor Light, stand upon great, surf-beaten headlands; others, like
Petit-Manan, arc built upon islands of a few acres in extent, islands
often so barren that not even a sturdy jack-pine can withstand the
rocky soil and fearful winds; still others, like Mt. Desert Rock, are
erected by wonderful feats of engineering upon veritable mountains of
rock, many miles from shore, where there is no land at all, and where
the children must be tied f o r safety. Not all, however, like Mt.
Desert Rock and Matinicus are from twenty to thirty miles from the
mainland. Many are within a few miles of shore, but those few
miles might as well be scores when the winter's cold and storms
begin.

The light-families, men, women, and children, though on some
lights there are, perhaps fortunately, no children, are uniformly a fine
group of people. The keepers themselves are sturdy men, keen and
intelligent, possessed of a judgment both clear and quick. Their
wives are, for the most part, calm, self-possessed women, who are
accustomed to share their husbands' work as well as to do their own,
and many of them could keep the lights quite as well. Three years
ago Eagle Island Light had such a captain when its keeper died of
pneumonia, contracted during a hard siege of balping a disabled
schooner. There were eight small children left for the mother to
support, and for eight months she kept the light whose warning
beams were thrown across the waters just as before. But the govern-