in summer each man in his turn should be permitted
to go on shore, and spend a month with his friends and acquaintance.

That a residence in the lighthouse, solitary and desolate as it must
have been, was considered no hardship by those who undertook the
office, the following anecdote will prove. A skipper was once carrying
out in his boat a new light-keeper to the rock. The man had been a
shoemaker, and the skipper said to him, 'Friend Jacob, how is it that
you choose to go out to be a light-keeper, when you can earn, as I
have been told, half-a-crown or three shillings a day on shore, by
making leathern hose,--the light-keeper's salary is but twenty-five
pounds a year, which, you know, is scarce ten shillings a week?' 'I am
going to be a light-keeper,' said the shoemaker, 'because I don't like
_confinement_.' This answer naturally excited the skipper's merriment,
and the shoemaker explained his meaning to be that he did not like to
be _confined to work_.

These dwellers on the rock were cut off from all communication with
their fellow-creatures for weeks and months together during stormy
weather; and it might naturally be expected that under these
circumstances they should be bound to each other by ties of brotherly
feeling and goodwill. But dissension and strife are not shut out from
the human bosom by mere retirement from the busy scenes of life. When
only two light-keepers inhabited the building, it happened that some
visitors, who had repaired thither to gratify their curiosity by an
examination of the lighthouse, observed to one of the men, how very
comfortably they might live there in a state of retirement. 'Yes,'
said the man, 'we might live comfortably enough, if we could have the
use of our tongues; but it is now a full month since my partner and I
have spoken to each other.'

Connected with Rudyerd's lighthouse an anecdote is told of Louis XIV.
which is honourable to his feelings. During the progress of the work
at the Eddystone rocks, a French privateer seized the men employed on
the building, and took them, together with their tools, to France,
expecting to be handsomely rewarded. While the captives lay in prison,
the transaction reached the ears of the monarch. He immediately
ordered them to be released, and the captors put in their place,
declaring, that though he was at war with England, he was not at war
with mankind. He observed that the Eddystone lighthouse was so
situated as to be of equal servi