Page 29 - 1918 February - To Dragma

122 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

of the Sunbeam had read about some fishermen who once fished long
ago on the Sea of Galilee, after he had prayed for the lonely light-
children and for other lonely children f a r across the seas, after we
had sung and told stories and "fiddled," she told us of her work. *

She is the sole member of her profession in America, and she has
held the position of state light-teacher since July, 1915, when the
Maine Board of Education, prompted and encouraged by the Sea-
coast Mission which had been investigating light conditions, decided
that some educational privileges, however slight, were due the chil-
dren of the lights. She is on duty from March 1 to December 30
of each year, and unlike most teachers she does not experience the
joys of Saturdays. Eight of the lights where there are several chil-
dren of school age, she visits regularly, once in eight weeks, thus
according to each child a scant six weeks of school during the entire
year. But, although she leaves tasks for the children to do in her
absence, much can be forgotten i n eight weeks, and the six yearly
visits to each station are often shortened by bad weather or impass-
able seas, or by necessary visits to other lights not on the regular
route. W i l l you try to feel for a moment the anxiety which would
be yours i f your boy and girl had but six weeks of school for the
year?

There were many things which she did not tell us, but which we
learned later from the captain of the Sunbeam—tales of long winter
journeys from one light to another in an open boat when the spray
froze, almost as it dashed against one, and when the waves were great
mountains above one's head; stories of "line-gales" which kept her
far longer in one light than she had planned while eager children
watched from the windows of another f a r distant; stories of lone-
liness and sickness and sorrow where even sympathy and comfort
seemed helpless and inactive. For the one light-teacher in America
must be far more than just a teacher as she journeys from light to
light.

Sad indeed are the chronicles indelibly written upon the life pages
of those who guard our coasts from danger and our ships from
disaster. I t was not many years ago that the mother of Avery Rock
Light saw her child fall into one of the great fissures which cut that
tiny, rocky island, and was powerless to save i t ; and i t was only
last winter that the fine, clear-eyed keeper of Petit-Manan Light was
lost while crossing to the mainland five miles away for his wife and
two little girls. But f a r more pathetic even than those things, as
life is so often sadder than death, are the little girl on one tiny
rocky island far out at sea, who every spring and summer cares