American Inventions and InventorsMowry, William A. (William Augustus)
History
American Inventions and Inventors
Mowry, William A. (William Augustus)
Inventions
At another time three drunken soldiers had stove a hole in their boat
not far from the lighthouse. Two swam ashore and Ida reached their boat
in season to save the third. Two years afterward a sheep was being
driven down the wharf when the animal plunged into the water. Three men
running along the shore in pursuit found a boat and pushed out after
the sheep. A heavy "sou'wester" was blowing and the boat was carried
away into deep water. Ida Lewis, in spite of the high wind, rowed out
in her little skiff and brought them safely ashore.
One winter a young scapegrace stole a sailboat from the wharf and
put out to sea. About midnight the gale drove the boat upon the
Limestone rocks a mile from the light, but the boy clung to the mast
all night. In the morning Ida Lewis found him, as she said, "shaking
and God-blessing me and praying to be set on shore." By these and
other instances in which Miss Lewis rescued those in danger she became
famous, and her praises were heralded in the newspapers and spoken at
many firesides. The citizens of Newport presented her with a boat as a
token of their admiration of her bravery.
These famous instances and many more that could be added to them would
seem to indicate that life in a lighthouse, with the mind constantly
running out to the sea, becoming familiar with the storms that rise,
and observing the dash of the waves and the roar of the wind--life
inured to hardship, but shut up within the safe keeping of the solid
walls of the little tower high above the raging waves--it would
seem that such a life is calculated to give courage, strength, and
fortitude, and to endue the heart with a heroic forgetfulness of self.
How important is the position of a lighthouse-keeper! Many lives are
in his hands, and on his fidelity depends the safety of millions of
dollars of property. Boats and ships of all kinds, steamers great and
small, sail away from one shore of the vast sea to the opposite shore,
or along the coast, all in comparative safety because of the various
beacon lights.
Indeed, is not the lighthouse itself a great lesson in morals? Every
one of us--every one of the seventy million people of the United States
has a part in the lighthouse. It is we, the people, who are furnishing
the government with its resources, and it is the great government of
our country that builds the lighthouses to warn mariners of danger. The
modern lighthouse is the symbol of benevolence. It carries with it the
lesson of "loving thy neighbor as thyself." This is the lesson of the
lighthouse to the people of the land, though its service is performed
for the people of the sea.
[Illustration: CYRUS H. McCORMICK.]
[Illustration: CUTTING SUGAR CANE IN THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.]
SECTION III.--FOOD.
CHAPTER I.
UNCULTIVATED FOODS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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