BOOK VI.
LIFE IN THE LIGHTHOUSE.
CHAPTER I.
THE LIGHTHOUSE-KEEPERS.
The life of a lighthouse-keeper is not without a certain monotony; but it must be greatly cheered by the reflection that it is devoted to a high and holy service. There is about it a certain heroic simplicity—it is so completely separated from the commonplace aims and concerns of the work-day world; and it is characterized, moreover, by an austere regularity which reminds one of the existence formerly led in grotto and cavern by saint and hermit, though its end is much more useful, and it is in itself of far greater value to mankind.
The first article of the instructions which every lighthouse-keeper is bound to obey—and to obey as implicitly as a soldier obeys the articles of war—runs thus:—