Obrazy na stronie
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small island and threw ourselves upon the mercy of the keeper and his wife. We were received with every possible

breast [mamma]. St. Eutrope (whom the peasants call Strope) will cure the dropsy [Fr. hydropisie]. This saint has also the power to make peas grow. We❘ hospitality. The keeper's coats and do not know how this superstition arose but prudent gardeners never omit to plant their peas on St. Eutrope's day, certain to have an abundant crop. People subject to vertigo address themselves to St. Avertin, lunatics (in Italian, matti) to St. Mathurin. . . . When we are subject to dizziness we find that everything whirls [French, ça tourne], SO we should pray at once to St. Saturnin. . . . We say that paralytics are "taken" [French, pris]. St. Pris is ready to come to their aid. Why does St. Anthony of Padua have the power to find lost objects? Because Padua is in Italian Padova, and lost objects formerly called

were épaves.

[in

French]

From Cassell's Saturday Journal.
IN A LIGHTHOUSE.

Our British lighthouses serve more than their one main useful purpose of guiding ships aright. This fact was driven home to the writer's mind very comfortably a week or two ago when, but for a lighthouse, he and his companions would have been forced to spend a rather dismal night in a crofter's cottage already extremely overcrowded with the crofter's children, and scarcely provided with what may be called the luxuries of civilization. It was in the Orkneys. We were in a small boat and overtaken by a wild equinoctial gale. With the wind against us and a raging sea, there was no chance of getting home. It behoved us, indeed, to run before the storm with every precaution, and get ashore where we could. The result was that towards six o'clock of a March evening we landed, soaked and chilled to the bone, on the small island of Graemsay, somewhat doubtful of our fate. However, after another half-hour's struggle with the wind, we waded through much mud towards the small lighthouse of this

trousers were brought forth for us and let it be whispered-also his good wife's stockings. The parlor fire was lighted for us. Brandy was set before us to help our numbed blood to circulate properly; and, in short, we tested to the full the ability of a British lighthouse to play the part of a British hotel. Nothing could have been pleasanter than the cosy room in which we sat to our tea, with the roar of the storm outside against the solid stone pillar of the lighthouse. The crockery and spoons all bore the official stamp, so did most of the hundred or so books in the bookcase. But the eggs were laid by private fowls, the bannocks were home made, the cream was faultless, the raspberry jam was from an excellent factory, and our appetites were of the best. So far from being annoyed by the invasion of three drenched strangers, our hosts really seemed delighted to see us. "It's an awful quiet life, as a rule," said the keeper's wife. "Just the winds and the waves and the few folks of the island."

After tea three new clay pipes and tobacco were set before us, as well as hot water for grog. The storm sounded worse than ever; it kept the windowframes in a continuous rattle-and nothing about a lighthouse is jerrybuilt. But we were as snug as birds in a nest. At eight o'clock the keeper came to see if he could do anything more for us ere he climbed to his watch-tower for a four-hours' spell of duty. He had a cup of tea in one hand and a pipe in the other. "No," he said, when we asked if he did not prefer a book. He found his pipe and his thoughts company enough. He and his assistant divided the night between them in four-hour spells. The day was their own, though of course there was always a vast deal of rubbing-up to be done among the lamps and fittings. A couple of hours later-with the storm still raging so that it was a struggle to fight across to the tower door-we

elimbed in the dark to see our keeper on duty, in his pent little chamber at the top of the lighthouse. The roar of the wind up here was terrible. But the lamps all burned brightly, and cast their steady radiance on the dark invisible sea outside.

the building and found a seat to the music of the voluntary, a violent march, pounded out from a wheezing harmonium. Upon this day even the strictest of Dissenters abates his dislike of symbol and ritual, and in pleasant confusion were heaped together corn and fruit, vegetable marrows and sunflowers, whilst colored texts, in surpassing discord of hues, strove to cover the sordid walls. Conspicuous in his glory, the

down the aisle, radiant in smiles and a brand-new uniform, putting to shame his less ornate colleague, who appeared in sober and dismal black.

In this Orkney lighthouse, out of the way of much traffic, there was no fogbell. The keeper and his wife and the assistant and his wife were thus spared the prospect now and then of hours of | village stationmaster paraded up and the most depressing music imaginable. Unless the reader has experienced it, he cannot believe how dismal it is to be shut out on a lonely rock, alone with a great fog-bell, the fog itself, and the sea. Each note of that bell seems to get at the brain. "Toll, toll, toll," it goes, with just the interval between that the hearer is so mad to fill up anyhow. And this may be continuous for twentyfour hours or more ! Our Orkney friend's watch-chamber was about three paces across. But he could amuse himself now and again by climbing to the grating and inspecting his lamps. And the wind had innumerable things to say to him, in the most peremptory manner. Also, he had his pipe. We wished him as cheery a "Good-night" as he gave us, and descended to our snug parlor, and later to our beds with fire in the room as well as all other comforts. But that insistent wind everywhere about the place made sleep rather hard to come at. Come at length, however, it did. The morning gave us a quiet sea and an easy sail home, after we had persuaded our kindly hosts to accept from us (and it was not so easy as the sail) considerably less than we should have had to pay for accommodation in a third-class hotel.

From The Speaker.

AN INTERRUPTED THANKSGIVING.

One September evening I was in a little village of the Eastern Counties whereat a Harvest Thanksgiving was to be held in a small chapel. Left as I was to my own resources, I passed into

In the seats were many women and but a sprinkling of men, one of whom, however, riveted my attention. He had a weather-bitten face, lined and seamed with the traces of open-air work; a face of dogged determination, but clouded with such despair as I never wish to see again. Of the service I remember little beyond the exulting face of the stationmaster as he handed around sheets of special hymns, sung to wondrously special tunes; but in time the first part closed, and the preacher somewhat nervously stood up. He was a very young man, fresh from books and college, with a knowledge of agriculture as profound as Mr. Winkle's of skating, although he had always felt, in common with his fellowtownsmen, that any one but the present farmers might make farming pay in numberless different ways.

I can recall nothing of the sermon; like the most of his hearers, I was vaguely looking through the open door (for the evening was very warm)-now watching the trees' long shadows slowly bend across the brown stubble, or across the green pastures where the cattle stood with that appropriateness of outline to which even a cow may attain in the distance of a summer evening, and now dreaming over the white moths that flitted along the graveyard hedge like white wraiths of those beneath. Then we would watch through the open window the gliding swifts as they shrilled round and round in streaming circle, and

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Suddenly the old farmer, whose face had won my attention, sprung to his feet and exclaimed, "Tis a lie!" and as his feelings overcame him he went on, "I can bear't no longer. I ha' come to harvest thanksgivings twenty year or more, but it breaks me at last. Thanksgiving for harvest, when wheat's at twenty shillings a quarter, and the dry has brought the yield to two the acre. The pest's among the cattle and the pigs, and we ha' nowhere to turn for ought. My children ha' gone all across seas, for there was no help for 'em here, and I must leave the land I've been on since I can mind, because it isn't to be made to pay. Forty years have I been there, and I go, come Michaelmas, to find bread where I can. Talk o' sins as much as you please-Lord knows they must be many, for we're sore smitten for them-but for pity's sake talk no more of the mercies!" Then he trembled back into his seat, all his excitement gone.

The silence that fell was unbroken by the preacher. He was but a lad and deserved sympathy, for the rest of what

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he would say was fled from himeven the splendid peroration which was to introduce most of the fruits of the earth, each with an appropriate epithet. At last he did what an older man might not have had wisdom to do. Quietly he said the Lord's Prayer, and that finished, the silence was again unbroken save by the sobs of the farmer who had brought a sermon to untimely end.

Then all went out, shocked and scandalized by such a breach of etiquette. Around the door the regular group assembled, with more to discuss than ever was known before. "Well, shocking, I do call it!" said the stationmaster. "What call had he for to listen if he wasn't suited? Couldn't he ha' looked at them texts I put on the wall myself?" And the sympathy of the audience went with the great official, who felt himself personally wronged.

Then an old laborer, whose rounded shoulders and forward-bending knees were telling of long work in damp fields and the inevitable rheumatism, remarked, half to himself, "Well, it fare to be an ill time for farmery folk. Lord help us all, for no one else will!" And with that ringing in my head I went away. C.

The Red Lake.-Lake Morat, in Switzerland, has a queer habit of turning red about two or three times every ten years. It is a pretty lake, like most of the sheets of water in that picturesque country, and its peculiar freak is attributed to a disposition to celebrate the slaughter of Burgundians under Charles the Bold, on June 21, 1476. But the French say that it blushes for the conduct of the Swiss, who in that battle gave the Burgundians no quarter. The old fishermen of the lake, who catch enormous fish called silures that weigh between twenty-five and forty kilograms, say when they see the waters of the lake reddening, that it is the blood of the Burgundians. As a matter of fact, some of the bodies of the Burgundians killed in the battle were thrown into the lake, while others were

| tossed into a grave filled with quicklime. This historical recollection angered the Burgundian soldiers of the victorious armies of the republic of 1708 so much that they destroyed the monument raised in honor of their compatriots who fell heroically in that battle, and Henri Martin very justly reproached them for that piece of vandalism. It would hardly do to attribute the reddening of the waters of the lake to the blood of the soldiers of Charles the Bold. The color is due simply to the presence in large quantities of little aquatic plants called by naturalists Oscillatoria rubescens. The curious thing about it is that Lake Morat is the only lake in which this curious growth is developed, and the peculiarity is beginning to interest scientific men.

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PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

THE LIVING AGE COMPANY, BOSTON.

TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.

FOR SIX DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of the LIVING AGE CO.

Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 15 cents.

DEATH AND THE HYACINTHS. SCENE.-A wood in summer. Tityrus and Melibus are seated upon the root of an elm-tree. Bright sunlight falls through the branches upon a belt of wild hyacinths.

TITYRUS.

Summer is come; the forest wakes to greet him,

And while the birds their melody renew, Look! the wild hyacinths come forth to meet him

And carpet all his sunlit path with blue.

MELIBUS.

And from the grey tower, where the swifts are wheeling,

The slow bell smites the end of earthly things.

MELIBUS.

Only far gloomier evidence to borrow, With such cold solace as the words may give,

That man of woman born is full of sorrow,

And flowerlike hath so short a time to live.

TITYRUS.

Turn, foolish hyacinths, your blue bells Hear braver counsel; when the lilies sick

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TITYRUS.

ened,

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The end is fallen upon us over-soon. The promise is forsworn.

Nay, seek with me, to old beliefs appeal- The day should yet be high: 'tis after

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