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In some lighthouses they burn, Professor Faraday says, up to two gallons of oil in a night, and if the windows are cold the steam from the oil clouds the inside of the windows, and, in frosty weather, freezes into ice." "Water out of a candle, eh?" exclaimed Mr. Bagges. "As hard to get, I should have thought, as blood out of a post. Where does it come from?"
"I came down as far as this several weeks ago when the ice went out of the fjord. There are two or three months when all this water is frozen over and there can be no shipping; but as soon as the ice breaks up, the lamps are lighted in the lighthouses and I come down to see them. Now it is so light all night that for two months the lamps are not lighted at all unless there is a storm."
Nevertheless, as compared with now, the state of things then was lamentably imperfect. The great storm came and went, having swept thousands of souls into eternity, and hundreds of thousands of pounds into nonentity. Lifeboats had not been invented. Harbours of refuge were almost unknown, and although our coasts bristled with dangerous reefs and headlands, lighthouses were few and far between.
There are delightful drives in the environs of Elsinore presenting land and sea views of exquisite loveliness, the water-side bristling with reefs, rocks, and lighthouses, while that of the land is charmingly picturesque with many villas, groves, and broad, cultivated meads.
"I thought the shingles would lift right off the roof." "But you wa'n't lookin' at the shingles. You was lookin' at the lighthouses; you jest said so. Emeline, was you lookin' for me? Was you worried about me?" He bent forward eagerly. "Hush!" she said, "you'll wake up the other woman-hater." "I don't care. I don't care if I wake up all creation.
In a few years, Japan had fitted herself out with a constitution, a bureau staff, an army and navy, post office, railroad and telegraph facilities, customs houses, a mint, docks, lighthouses, mills and factories, public schools, colleges and schools of special instruction, newspapers, publishing houses and a new literature written by Japanese students of European life and history; Ambassadors and consuls were admitted to Japan and sent to the other nations; scholars sought the western schools and returned to put into practice western ideas; European ships established commercial relations with the islands; and Christian missionaries hurried into this promising new field.
Islands of old red sandstone loom like sentinels along the coast, covered with lighthouses to warn the mariners. The twin peaks of Montepueblo covered with perpetual snow, seemed to support the heavens as do the pillars the dome of the capitol. Swarms of screaming sea gulls fill the air, some of which, benumbed by cold alighted on the steamer's deck.
His brusque gestures enlivened his speech, which penetrated one like a dagger, and he had bursts of thought, just as lighthouses throw out flashes of fire, great, genial lights that seemed to illuminate a whole world of ideas. The home of the two friends was pretty and by no means commonplace. Everywhere were paintings, some superb, some strange, representing different conceptions of insanity.
Among these, he said, were laws for the punishment of counterfeiters, passed under the power to coin money; the erection of lighthouses under the power to regulate commerce; the prohibition of offences against the post-office department under the power to establish post-offices and post-roads; and the acceptance of sites for arsenals, forts, and dockyards under the power to control them.
The sum of our knowledge of the ancient history of lighthouses is neither accurate nor extensive: we proceed, therefore, to notice those of modern times.
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