ul hurricane, cast ashore
and dashed to pieces, leaving hundreds of passengers, men, women, and
children, to perish in the dark night, grasping the very rocks of their
native land, the event is too awful to escape notice. So numerous are
the crushed and broken hearts in the land, that their cry awakens public
attention, and the newspapers teem for a time with graphic details of
the wreck; details which, graphic though they be, fall inconceivably
short of the dread reality; but no notice is taken, except in the way of
brief record, of the dozens of small coasting vessels that shared the
fate of that steamer in the same terrific gale. No one reads the fate
of yonder little schooner, one mast of which is seen just peeping out of
the sea under that frowning cliff, and yet there is a terrible tale
connected with it. Who shall tell or conceive of the agonies endured,
before the morning light came, by the skipper and his crew of four men
and a boy, as their little ship was lifted and flung upon the rocks by
each succeeding wave? And who can conceive their feelings when the
longed for light _did_ come at last, and daring fishermen on the shore
sought to render aid in vain, for their boats were overturned and cast
back upon the beach, and themselves barely escaped with their lives, and
so the perishing men stood in helpless misery and gazed landward in
despair until a mighty wave carried away the mast to which they clung,
and, with a last wild shriek they sank in sight of friends and home,
because _there was no lifeboat there_."

"Can this be true?" said Mrs Foster, in a tone of deep sympathy.

"True!" echoed Mr Summers, "would God that it were not. I have
mentioned but one case, yet it is a fact that for _every_ gale that
blows _dozens_ of wrecks take place on our coasts, each with its more or
less tragic history. You remember the last gale? It is not three weeks
since it blew. No fewer than one hundred and ninety-five wrecks took
place on the shores of the United Kingdom on that night and the
following day, and six hundred and eighty-four lives were lost, many of
which would undoubtedly have been saved had there been a sufficient
number of lifeboats stationed along our shores; for you must bear in
remembrance, that although hundreds of lives are annually saved by
ordinary shore boats, and by ships' boats, hundreds also are saved by
lifeboats in circumstances in which ordinary boats would be utterly
useless.

"Here i