light, lived the daughter of an old West India
and coasting captain, who would permit his chronometers to be repaired
and cleaned by nobody but Minuit. His cottage stood where now there is
a broad and sandy street leading to a wooden pier and to
bathing-houses on a pleasure beach. The few people near at hand were
pilots, captains of bay craft, and grain-buyers; although the Dutch
and Swedish farms, alternating with long marshes, musical with birds,
had lined the wide Delaware at this point many a year. In calm, sunny
weather, the broad beauty of the river and its low gold and emerald
shores, with bulky vessels swinging up on the slow full tide, combined
the sceneries of America and the Netherlands; but when a gale blew
over the low shores, scattering the reed-birds like the golden pollen
of the marsh lilies, and cold white gulls succeeded, diving and
careening like sharks of the sky, the ships and coasters felt no
serenity in these wide yeasty reaches of the Delaware bay, and they
labored to drop anchor behind the natural breakwater of Reedy Island.
There, clustering about as thickly in that olden time as they now seek
from all the ocean round the costly shelter of Henlopen breakwater,
coaster and pirate, fisherman and slaver, sent up the prayer a
beneficent government has since granted in the fullest measure, for a
perfect Coast Survey and a vigilant Lighthouse Board.

"The daughter of Captain Lum was named Lois, and she was the junior of
Fithian Minuit by several years, a slender, beautiful girl, with hair
and eyes of the softest brown, and household ways, daughterly and
endearing.

"The old sea-captain, who made five voyages a year to the nearer
Indies, and sent ashore to Port Penn as he passed, returning, the best
of rum and the freshest of tropical fruits, looked with a jealous eye
upon any possible suitor to his daughter, and had, perhaps,
embarrassed her prospects for a younger protector, if such she had
ever wished. But he loved to see the clock-maker come to the cottage,
who had never shown partiality for any woman, while popular with all.

"'Minuit,' he used to say, 'the best man on watch by land or sea, thou
North Star; look to my girl as to my chronometer, and I'll pay thee
twice the cost of thy time!'

"It was the captain's delight, while ashore, to have every timepiece,
stationary or portable, taken apart in the presence of his daughter
and himself, while he told his sailor yarns, and Lois stood ready