For every girl in the club she had brought home a silver pin in the shape of a four-leaved clover. “Whether you keep up the club or not,” she said, “it will be a pretty souvenir of a very happy summer.”
I don’t know whether I have made mother’s way plain to all my readers, but I hope they see it is a way of taking pains, of being kind, of being honest and diligent, and never doing with one hand what ought to be done with both. If I learn to keep house in mother’s way I shall be perfectly satisfied.
Father says: “Thee certainly may, dear child! For my part, I trust my little lass.”
The Lighthouse Lamp.
BY MARGARET E. SANGSTER.
The winds came howling down
from the north,
Like a hungry
wolf for prey,
And the bitter sleet went
hurtling forth,
In the pallid
face of the day.
And the snowflakes drifted
near and far,
Till the land
was whitely fleeced,
And the light-house lamp,
a golden star,
Flamed over the
waves’ white yeast.
In the room at the foot of
the light-house
Lay mother and
babe asleep,
And little maid Gretchen was
by them there,
A resolute watch
to keep.
There were only the three
on the light-house isle,
But father had
trimmed the lamp,
And set it burning a weary
while
In the morning’s
dusk and damp.
“Long before night I’ll
be back,” he said,
And his white
sail slipped away;
Away and away to the mainland
sped,
But it came not
home that day.
The mother stirred on her
pillow’s space,
And moaned in
pain and fear,
Then looked in her little
daughter’s face
Through the blur
of a starting tear.
“Darling,” she
whispered, “it’s piercing cold,
And the tempest
is rough and wild;
And you are no laddie strong
and bold,
My poor little
maiden child.
“But up aloft there’s
the lamp to feed,
Or its flame will
die in the dark,
And the sailor lose in his
utmost need
The light of our
islet’s ark.”
“I’ll go,”
said Gretchen, “a step at a time;
Why, mother, I’m
twelve years old,
And steady, and never afraid
to climb,
And I’ve
learned to do as I’m told.”
Then Gretchen up to the top
of the tower,
Up the icy, smooth-worn
stair,
Went slowly and surely that
very hour,
The sleet in her
eyes and hair.
She fed the lamp, and she
trimmed it well,
And its clear
light glowed afar,
To warn of reefs, and of rocks
to tell,
This mariner’s
guiding star.
And once again when the world
awoke
In the dawn of
a bright new day,
There was joy in the hearts
of the fisher folks
Along the stormy
bay.
When the little boats came
sailing in
All safe and sound
to the land,
To the haven the light
had helped them win,
By the aid of
a child’s brave hand.