This Boulder
from the Capitol Hill in Boston, is a tribute
from Massachusetts friends.
Elizabeth Van Lew was indeed a Spy working against the city of her birth, and the friends of her love and loyalty,—a traitor in one sense of the word; but above all was she tireless in working for her highest ideals, and so is she worthy of respect and honor wherever the Stars and Stripes float free over united America.
IDA LEWIS: THE GIRL WHO KEPT LIME ROCK BURNING; A HEROIC LIFE-SAVER
"Father has the appointment! We are going to live on the island, and you must all row over to see me very often. Isn't it wonderful?"
A bright-faced young girl, surrounded by a group of schoolmates, poured out her piece of news in such an eager torrent of words that the girls were as excited as the teller of the tale, and there was a chorus of: "Wonderful! Of course we will! What fun to live in that fascinating place! Let's go and see it now!"
No sooner decided than done, and in a very short time there was a fleet of rowboats led by that of Ida Lewis, on their way to the island in Baker's Bay, where the Lime Rock Light stood, of which Captain Hosea Lewis had just been appointed keeper.
Ida, Captain Hosea's daughter, was born at Newport, Rhode Island, on the 25th of February, 1841, and was sent to school there as soon as she was old enough. She was a quick-witted, sure-footed, firm-handed girl from her earliest childhood, and a great lover of the sea in all its changing phases. Often instead of playing games on land with her mates she would beguile some old fisherman to take her out in his fishing dory, and eagerly help him make his hauls, and by the time she was fourteen years old she was an expert in handling the oars, and as tireless a swimmer as could be found in all Newport.
And now her father had been appointed keeper of the Lime Rock Light, the "Ida Lewis" light, as it came to be known in later years, and the girl's home was no longer to be on terra firma, but on the rock-ribbed island where the lighthouse stood, whose beacon-light cast strong, steady rays across Baker's Bay, to the greater Narragansett Bay, of which it is only an arm.