from one of the bold cliffs of the island, one is moved to read to his companions who are already seated around him this "Swan Song of Parson Avery," by Whittier :

"When the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late,

Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight,

Dropping down the river harbor in the shallop' Watch and Wait.'

Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mellow summer morn,
With the newly planted orchards dropping their fruits first-born,
And the homesteads like green islands amid a sea of corn.

Broad meadows reached out seaward the tided creeks between,
And hills rolled wavelike inland, with oaks and walnuts green :
A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eyes had never seen.

Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away where duty led,
And the voice of God seemed calling, to break the living bread
To the souls of fishers starving on the rocks of Marblehead.

All day they sailed: at nightfall the pleasant land-breeze died,
The blackening sky at midnight its starry lights denied,
And far and low the thunder of tempest prophesied !

Blotted out were all the coast lines, gone were rock and wood and sand:

Grimly anxious stood the skipper, with the rudder in his hand, And questioned of the darkness what was sea and what was land

And the preacher heard his dear ones, nestled round him, weeping

sore:

'Never heed, my little children! Christ is walking on before To the pleasant land of heaven, where the sea shall be no more.'

All at once the great cloud parted, like a curtain drawn aside, To let down the torch of lightning on the terror far and wide; And the thunder and the whirlwind together smote the tide.

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:

There was wailing in the shallop woman's wail and man's despair,
A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare,
And through it all the murmur of Father Avery's prayer.

From his struggle in the darkness with the wild waves and the blast,

On a rock, where every billow broke above him as it passed,
Alone, of all his household, the man of God was cast.

There a comrade heard him praying, in the pause of wave and wind:

'All my own have gone before me, and I linger just behind. Not for life I ask, but only for the rest thy ransomed find!

'In this night of death I challenge the promise of thy Word!
Let me see the great salvation of which mine ears have heard!
Let me pass from hence forgiven, through the grace of Christ, our
Lord!

'In the baptism of these waters wash white my every sin,

And let me follow up to thee my household and my kin!

Open the sea-gate of thy heaven, and let me enter in!'

When the Christian sings his death-song, all the listening heavens

draw near;

And the angels, leaning over the walls of crystal, hear

How the notes, so faint and broken, swell to music in God's ear.

The ear of God was open to his servant's last request:

As the strong wave swept him downward, the sweet hymn upward pressed,

And the soul of Father Avery went singing to its rest.

There was wailing on the mainland, from the rocks of Marblehead;
In the stricken church of Newbury the notes of prayer were read;
And long by board and hearthstone the living mourned the dead.

And still the fishers outbound, or scudding from the squall,
With grave and reverent faces the ancient tale recall,

When they see the white waves breaking on the Rock of Avery's
Fall!"

With reference to Thatcher's Island, Mr. Babson says: "It is estimated to contain about eighty acres, most of which have patches of good soil, affording rich pasturage for a few cattle. In 1714 it was purchased by Rev. John White for a hundred pounds. He sold it in 1727, to Joseph Allen, for a hundred and seventy-five pounds. In 1771 the Colonial Government became its owner at a cost of five hundred pounds, and proceeded in the same year to erect two lighthouses and a dwellinghouse on it. The lights were lighted for the first time Dec. 21, 1771. At the commencement of the Revolutionary War, the keeper of the lights (Kirkwood) was forcibly removed from the island by Captain Rogers's company of minute-men, as a person inimical to the patriotic sentiments generally held by the people of the town. After a lapse of time the lights were relighted, and have ever since thrown forth their friendly beams to greet the anxious mariner, and in the darkness of night direct his way over the pathless sea."

A few years since, the ancient lighthouses were taken down, and new ones erected in their places. Together with these two unusually tall towers of stone, there are substantial and comfortable dwellings for the keepers and tenders of the lights, and a building for the steam-engine, which, through the hours and days of thick vapor or fog, sounds the fog-horn to apprise approaching vessels of their situation and danger.

The lighthouses are round towers, and so the ascent to their lanterns of necessity is spiral. From the balconies around the lanterns the views are magnificent. But these costly shafts, uplifted so high from their solid foundations toward the heavens, are not chiefly noticeable for enabling the vision of man to overlook so much of land and sea, but for the power and splendor of their lights. Far over the sea these lights are descried by ships homeward bound from foreign ports, by fishingcraft from the Gulf of Labrador or from the Banks of Newfoundland, and by coasters following the long and irregular shore from the British Provinces and the ports of Maine to Massachusetts Bay. Nearer, from the windows of hundreds of dwellings, they are beheld night after night through the years, almost as having the thought and care of human forms, and as taking into themselves the watchfulness of anxious thousands on shore, and holding it far out over the waves in flames which never become dim. The sea-birds, attracted by the splendor of these quenchless flames, fly with such force against the plates of glass which protect the flames from wind and storm, that they fall dead upon the rocks around the towers. As moths and millers are drawn to the lamp in the parlor, so the wild goose, the brant, the black duck, the loon, and the coot are drawn to the glowing lantern on the lighthouse tower. But how much of the world's interest, of man's concern, is blended

with the rays which stream from the lofty tower on the ocean's edge of rock and sand! Longfellow has not in too glowing numbers told his story of the Lighthouse :

"The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,

And on its outer point, some miles away,
The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.
Even at this distance I can see the tides,

Upheaving, break unheard along its base,
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides
In the white lip and tremor of the face.

And, as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
Through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light,
With strange, unearthly splendor in its glare.

Nor one alone: from each projecting cape

And perilous reef along the ocean's verge,
Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape,

Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge.

Like the great giant Christopher it stands

Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave,
Wading far out among the rocks and sands,
The night-o'ertaken mariner to save.

And the great ships sail outward and return,
Bending and bowing o'er the billowy swells,
And ever joyful, as they see it burn,

They wave their silent welcomes and farewells.

They come forth from the darkness, and their sails
Gleam for a moment only in the blaze,

And eager faces, as the light unveils,

Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze.