I was told by the next keeper, that on the 8th of June following, a particularly clear and beautiful morning, he rose about half an hour before sunrise, and having a little time to spare, for his custom was to extinguish his lights at sunrise, walked down toward the shore to see what he might find. When he got to the edge of the bank he looked up, and, to his astonishment, saw the sun rising, and already part way above the horizon. Thinking that his clock was wrong, he made haste back, and though it was still too early by the clock, extinguished his lamps, and when he had got through and come down, he looked out the window, and, to his still greater astonishment, saw the sun just where it was before, two thirds above the horizon. He showed me where its rays fell on the wall across the room. He proceeded to make a fire, and when he had done there was the sun still at the same height. Whereupon, not trusting to his own eyes any longer, he called up his wife to look at it, and she saw it also. There were vessels in sight on the ocean, and their crews, too, he said, must have seen it, for its rays fell on them. It remained at that height for about fifteen minutes by the clock, and then rose as usual and nothing else extraordinary happened during that day. Though accustomed to the coast, he had never witnessed nor heard of such a phenomenon before. I suggested that there might have been a cloud in the horizon invisible to him, which rose with the sun, and his clock was only as accurate as the average; or perhaps, as he denied the possi

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blity of this, it was such a looming of the sun as is said to occur at Lake Superior and elsewhere. John Franklin, for instance, says in his Narrative, that when he was on the shore of the Polar Sea, the horizontal refraction varied so much one morning that "the upper limb of the sun twice appeared at the horizon before it finally rose."

He certainly must be a sun of Aurora to whom the sun looms, when there are so many millions to whom it glooms rather, or who never see it till an hour after it has risen. But it behooves us old stagers to keep our lamps trimmed and burning to the last, and not trust to the sun's looming.

This keeper remarked that the centre of the flame should be exactly opposite the centre of the reflectors, and that accordingly, if he was not careful to turn down his wicks in the morning, the sun falling on the reflectors on the south side of the building would set fire to them, like a burning-glass, in the coldest day, and he would look up at noon and see them all lighted! When your lamp is ready to give light, it is readiest to receive it, and the sun will light it. His successor said that he had never known them to blaze in such a case, but merely to smoke.

I saw that this was a place of wonders. In a sea turn or shallow fog while I was there the next summer, it being clear overhead, the edge of the bank twenty rods distant appeared like a mountain pastare in the horizon. I was completely deceived by t, and I could then understand why mariners some

times ran ashore in such cases, especially in the night, supposing it to be far away, though they could see the land. Once since this, being in a large oyster boat two or three hundred miles from here, in a dark night, when there was a thin veil of mist on land and water, we came so near to running on to the land before our skipper was aware of it, that the first warning was my hearing the sound of the surf under my elbow. I could almost have jumped ashore, and we were obliged to go about very suddenly to prevent striking. The distant light for which we were steering, supposing it a light-house five or six miles off, came through the cracks of a fisherman's bunk not more than six rods distant.

The keeper entertained us handsomely in his solitary little ocean-house. He was a man of singular patience and intelligence, who, when our queries struck him, rung as clear as a bell in response. The light-house lamps a few feet distant shone full into my chamber, and made it as bright as day, so I knew exactly how the Highland Light bore al. that night, and I was in no danger of being wrecked. Unlike the last, this was as still as a summer night. I thought as I lay there, half awake and half asleep, looking upward through the window at the lights above my head, how many sleepless eyes from far out on the Ocean stream - mariners of all nations spinning their yarns through the various watches of the night—were directed toward my couch.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

INTRODUCTION.

N point of quantity Emerson's prose much exceeds his poetry. That has been gathered into two small volumes and further sifted by the author into one; the prose has been more frequently published, and at this date (1880) is comprised in three duodecimo volumes. Its form is either the oration or the essay, with one exception. English Traits records the observations of the writer after two journeys to England, and, while it may loosely be classed among essays, has certain distinctive features which separate it from the essays of the same writer; there is in it narrative, reminiscence, and description which make it more properly the notebook of a philosophic traveller.

Under the term oration may be included all those writings of Emerson which were originally delivered as lectures, addresses, orations before literary and learned societies. During much of his literary life he has used the platform as his first and chief mode of communicating what he has had to ay, and the speeches there made have frequently

afterward been published in book form. It may be said of his essays as well as of his deliberate orations that the writer has never been wholly unmindful of an audience; he has always been conscious that he was not merely delivering his mind but speaking directly to men. One is aware of a certain pointedness of speech which turns the writer into a speaker and the printed words into a sounding voice. Especially where one has heard Emerson does his impressive manner disclose itself in every sentence that one reads. In the orations, however, this directness of speech is most apparent, and their form is cast for it. The end of the speech is kept more positively before the speaker; there is also more distinct eloquence, that raising of the voice, by which the volume of an utterance is increased and a note of thought is prolonged. The form of the oration requires, moreover, a somewhat brisker manner and crisper sentences, for the speaker knows that the hearer has no leisure to pursue his way by winding clauses.

Yet the spirit of the essay, the other great division of Emerson's writing, more distinctly enters into the oration. It is true that in whatever he writes Emerson feels his audience, but it is an audience of thinking men, and he is not unwilling to give his best thought and to surender himself in his work to the leadings of his own thought. Come with me, he seems to say to reader or listener, we will follow courageously in this theme whithersoever Thought leads us; and thus in essay or ora