Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1883-08-16
The Bar Lighthouse.

Government had, for several years,
been sadly neglecting job of mending
in the case of the Bar Lighthouse
bridge. Here and there boards had be-
gun to spring suspiciously beneath un-
wary footsteps; and then the wind had
begun to tear them off, and the rain to
rot and moulder them down. What
was every mans business was nobody's,
and no individual was disposed to in
terfere with the province of that alb
stract millionaire, the United States
Government. To be sure, the keeper of
the Bar Light, Jackson Reed, who was
naturally more solicitous concerning
the holding out of the stur ,ture than
any one else, had wildly and fruitlessly
patched some of the worst places, off
and on, after a hard ''northeaster, %
when he awoke more keenly to the ex-
igencies of the case, and the hopeless
dilatoriness of his taskmaster. But it
had amounted to very little. Long ne
glect had made more than mere patch
ing necessary. Now the quarter-mile
bridge leading to the Bar Lighthouse,
il not in an absolutely unsafe condition,
was not calculated to inspire any degree
Of confidence in the unaccustomed
crosser at least. 1t was not quite so
bad at low tide, or on mild still day.
There was not much to fear then be-
yond little fall and a ducking that
is, if one cleared one of those ragged
apertures successfully. But on a dark
night with the winds bowling over it,
and the ocean laundering beneath it,
it was the sort of a bridge that only
disembodied spirit could be supposed
to cross with any degree of nonchalence.
The lighthouse itself was only an
ordinary dwelling house, strongly built.
with tower for the light. 1t stood on
massive pile Of rocks, with little tufts
of coarse vegetation in the clefts. Jack
son Reed, who had an unfortunate love
and longing for a garden spot, had
actually wheeled enough earth over
from the mainland for little patch a
few yards square, and when he was not
engaged in fruitless struggle with the
broken bridge he was engaged in a
fruittess struggle with his garden. A
pottering old man was Jackson Reed,
lacking in nervous force and quickness
intellect; but he had never let the
| hit go out, and the only thing that is
absolutely required of a lighthouse
keeper is to keep the light burning for
the sailors who steer by it.
The wonder was that his wife Sarah
should have been his wife. She was a
person n of a different mould merely,
but of different kind not Of differ
ent species, but of a different genus.
Nervous and alert, what her husband
accepted in patient silence she received
with shrill remonstrance and question
ing. Her husband patched the bridge,
crawling over its long reach on his old
knees she rallied, as she watched him,
at the neglect of the government. He
uncomplainingly brushed the sand from
his little puny struggling plants, and
she set her thin face against the wind
that cast it there.
In both, the religious element or.
cast of mind was strongly predominant,
but Jackson Reed simply looked out on
nature and into his own soul, and took
in as plain incontrovertible facts the
broken bridge, the tossing sea, his little
wind swept, sand-strewn garden patch,
and God in heaven. Neither proved
the other or nullified the other; they
were simply there. But Sarah Reed,
looking out on the frail, unsafe bridge
which connected them with the main
land, and the wicked, senseless sea
which had swallowed up her father and
a brother whom she had idolized, and
the poor Struggling plants trying to live
under the bleak winds, had seen in them
so many evidences of neither Gods love
and mercy or his existence. She was
rheumatic old woman now, al
most helpless, in fact, unable to step
without the help of her husband. And
she sat, day in and day out, at one
of the sea windows of her sitting
room, knitting, and holding her de-
fiant old heart persistently against the
pricks.
The minister at Rye, jealous young
man, with an innocent confidence in
his powers of holy argument, had visited
her repeatedly, with the view of improv-
ing her state of mind. She had Joined
the church over which he presided, in
her youth indeed, it was the church
nearest to the lighthouse, and that was
three miles distant. The minister had
heard from one of his parishioners, who
was connection of hers, that Mrs. Reed
had lost her faith, and straightway he
was fred with holy ardor to do something
for her spiritual benefit. But even his
tonguey confidence and ingenuousness
could CLEAN but little satisfaction from
his interviews with the rheumatic and
unbelieving old woman.
mo, Mr., Psndleton," she used to