en. In the spring of 1855 he found nineteen small
yellow-birds, perhaps goldfinches or myrtle-birds, thus lying dead
around the light-house; and sometimes in the fall he had seen where a
golden plover had struck the glass in the night, and left the down and
the fatty part of its breast on it.

Thus he struggled, by every method, to keep his light shining before
men. Surely the light-house keeper has a responsible, if an easy,
office. When his lamp goes out, _he_ goes out; or, at most, only one
such accident is pardoned.

I thought it a pity that some poor student did not live there, to profit
by all that light, since he would not rob the mariner. "Well," he said,
"I do sometimes come up here and read the newspaper when they are noisy
down below." Think of fifteen argand lamps to read the newspaper by!
Government oil!--light enough, perchance, to read the Constitution by! I
thought that he should read nothing less than his Bible by that light. I
had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a light-house,
which was more light, methinks, than the University afforded.

When we had come down and walked a dozen rods from the light-house, we
found that we could not get the full strength of its light on the narrow
strip of land between it and the shore, being too low for the focus,
and we saw only so many feeble and rayless stars; but at forty rods
inland we could see to read, though we were still indebted to only one
lamp. Each reflector sent forth a separate "fan" of light: one shone on
the windmill, and one in the hollow, while the intervening spaces were
in shadow. This light is said to be visible twenty nautical miles and
more, to an observer fifteen feet above the level of the sea. We could
see the revolving light at Race Point, the end of the Cape, about nine
miles distant, and also the light on Long Point, at the entrance of
Provincetown Harbor, and one of the distant Plymouth Harbor Lights,
across the Bay, nearly in a range with the last, like a star in the
horizon. The keeper thought that the other Plymouth Light was concealed
by being exactly in a range with the Long Point Light. He told us that
the mariner was sometimes led astray by a mackerel-fisher's lantern, who
was afraid of being run down in the night, or even by a cottager's
light, mistaking them for some well-known light on the coast,--and, when
he discovered his mistake, was wont to curse the prudent fisher or the
wakeful cottager without reason