e a sensible
effect upon their conduct, and to regulate their general habits as
members of society." He notes, with the same dip of ink, that "the
brasses were not clean, and the persons of the keepers not _trig_"; and
thus we find him writing to a culprit: "I have to complain that you are
not cleanly in your person, and that your manner of speech is ungentle,
and rather inclines to rudeness. You must therefore take a different
view of your duties as a lightkeeper." A high ideal for the service
appears in these expressions, and will be more amply illustrated further
on. But even the Scottish lightkeeper was frail. During the unbroken
solitude of the winter months, when inspection is scarce possible, it
must seem a vain toil to polish the brass hand-rail of the stair, or to
keep an unrewarded vigil in the lightroom; and the keepers are
habitually tempted to the beginnings of sloth, and must unremittingly
resist. He who temporises with his conscience is already lost. I must
tell here an anecdote that illustrates the difficulties of inspection.
In the days of my uncle David and my father there was a station which
they regarded with jealousy. The two engineers compared notes and were
agreed. The tower was always clean, but seemed always to bear traces of
a hasty cleansing, as though the keepers had been suddenly forewarned.
On inquiry, it proved that such was the case, and that a wandering
fiddler was the unfailing harbinger of the engineer. At last my father
was storm-stayed one Sunday in a port at the other side of the island.
The visit was quite overdue, and as he walked across upon the Monday
morning he promised himself that he should at last take the keepers
unprepared. They were both waiting for him in uniform at the gate; the
fiddler had been there on Saturday!

My grandfather, as will appear from the following extracts, was much a
martinet, and had a habit of expressing himself on paper with an almost
startling emphasis. Personally, with his powerful voice, sanguine
countenance, and eccentric and original locutions, he was well qualified
to inspire a salutary terror in the service.

"I find that the keepers have, by some means or another, got into the
way of cleaning too much with rotten-stone and oil. I take the
principal keeper to _task_ on this subject, and make him bring a
clean towel and clean one of the brazen frames, which leaves the
towel in an odious state. This towel I put up in a sheet of