Page 30 - 1918 February - To Dragma

TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 123

tenderly for some yellow rag-weed growing i n a cleft of the rock, and
calls it her "garden"; and the boy of six on another light who has
never in all his life seen a tree!

"Do you like to live on the light?" I asked a little girl of twelve,
a girl who last year saved her brother from drowning.

"Oh, yes'm," she told me. "I've lived here f o r ten years, and I
don't remember the other light where I was born. I came away
when I was so little. I wouldn't know how to live anywhere else,
I guess, but 1 wish the war would stop so that folks could come to
us again. It's awful lonesome away out here just by ourselves."

Yes, it is "awful lonesome" away out there. We, who during
those August days cruised past light after light, some half hidden
in fog and sounding a hoarse, warning note as lonesome as their
children, some mirrored in smooth, blue water and reflecting the sun
on their great lamps,—we began to realize something of that lone-
liness. We knew, too, because the Sunbeam's captain had told us,
that the past summer has meant a tattered dream to many of the
light-children. Early i n the spring dozens of girls, who also wanted
"to discover Maine" had volunteered to go on the light islands, stay
for the summer, and teach the children. They would have come
fresh from college and glowing with enthusiasm; and they would
have brought books and stories and long-to-be-cherished glimpses of
another life to children, many of whom have never seen a village
street, a horse, or a train of cars. But the light-stations were closed
to a l l visitors, and with them were closed the doors of many imagina-
tions, which had for a little time gazed expectantly into another
land.

The seven children on Nash Island Light were perhaps most dis-
appointed of all, for they had been told at Christmas time that two
of us were coming to them for the summer months They are such
bright boys and girls, but only the oldest, a lad of seventeen, has
ever been on the mainland f o r even a brief term of school. The
knowledge that we were coming was quite a Christmas g i f t to chil-
dren whose imagination must be very rampant to imagine a Santa
Claus driving his reindeer across a wind-swept sea. They would
learn well, they promised their mother, who was even more happy
than they. But the chance to learn did not come, and the morning
we passed Nash Island, the sea was too stormy for the little family
there to row out to us even f o r an hour.

We saw them waving to us on the rocks by the shore, dim figures
in the fog, and the lonesome sound of their great bell followed us
far out to sea.