Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A NIGHT IN A LIGHTHOUSE. Years ago we were familiar with the murmuring of the sea, listened entranced to its wondrous voices, but it had been long since its music had been our lullaby and we had slept with its waters all around us. The sensation was almost novel and entirely delightful; we could not help thinking that we had some connection with the great light in the tower, and the safety which it gave to the sailors who passed by. The sea has strange, multitudinous voices for those who have ears to hear. Sometimes it has a cry of pain, like it were a caged monster chafing at the bounds which confine it, and reaching out angrily to seize its prey; and again its tones are soft and seductive as the voices of the fabled sirens, and its retreating waves woo to their embrace with no intimation that their returning grasp is relentless as death. Sometimes the waves will thunder in a grand, joyful, and triumphant chorus, as if an omnipotent hand measured their flow into harmony with the melodies of infinite thought and the movements of limitless worlds; and again in fantastic and playful mood they will dance as lightly as the feet of Mirth, and sing as gayly as the lips of Love. We seemed again to hear the sea in all these moods, and remembering the recent great storm, and the evidences of it which were all around us, the thought of its terror clung close to us, and in our fancy the wrecks drifted slowly by, " the gurgling cry Of the strong swimmer in his agony" fell upon our ears, and the drowned men came gliding in procession before us, each spectral form now rising on the crested wave and now dipping below it. The thoughts became too heavy, and with sympathy for those who mourned the desolations which shipwreck had made, and with thankfulness that such sorrows had...