Omaha daily bee., 1902-12-21

l hhElEh hoBBlNS REEF b"lGliliOOSE.
record. In her quaint, broken English she
says to those who compliment her:
you think it fine? | am glad. But |
like to work. 1t keeps me contented and
happy. And why don't l take a vacation
once in n while and let Jake take care OF
the light? Ach! l wouldn't know what to
do with a whole day on shorc-and then, |
love the light"
Two things. however. Mrs. Walker does
leave to her as~sistant-going ashore for
supplies and rescuing rowboat fishermen.
Not infrequently young Walker has to
Tower his boat from the davits on the light
houses sea wall and pull out to a boat
caught and being crushed in the ice, or
capsized by a sudden squall or the wash of
a liner. In e~ffecting several OF these
rescucs he himself has narrowly escaped
being crushed by the Ice that often piles
up eight and ten feet high about the light
house.
He has also had not a few p~erilous trips
to st. George for supplies. In good weather
the distance is co yered in less than half
an hour, but when the autumnal storms
and winter set in Jake does well II he can
make shore after two hours Of rowing. FIRE.
quently he gets ashore, but when he starts
to return he is forced to put back to
staten lSldnu ana walt TOT the STORM 10
die down. He spent three hours the day
before last New Years day trying to reach
the lighthouse with "A turkey and hxings,
but at last, and only when he was half
frozen, he gave up the struggle, with the
result that the people on the Robbins Reef
had no New Years dinner.
The rowboat communication with the
main land, and the only kind that there Is.
is much Interrupted at this season of year.
Last winter Jake did not get ashore more
than half a dozen times. But there is al
ways one day that he makes every effort
to get over to ST. George. That is the day
before Christmas, when his wife and their
three children-Emma, the eldest, 4 years
old; Katherine and Alberta, the baby-go
TO New York to see the Christmas toys and
buy gifts for one another and the faithful
woman left alone in the lighthouse.
This is one of the two or three times a
year that these three water babies get on
land, and the sights that they see make
their little eyes bulge with wonder and fur
nish food for childish talk for days to come
with their grandmother, who, until her SOB
married about five years ago, had her two
children for her only companions for nearly
ten years.
Because they get TO see people outside
the Lighthouse so seldom, the little girls
are extremely shy when a stranger once in
a great while chambers up the iron ladder
reaching down to the water along their
ONES side. No amount OF coaxing can
induce the two younger to come from their
hiding place behind their gTandmother's
skirts, and only after prolonged persuasion
will Emma forget her bashfulness enough
to smile timidly and lisp sweetly,
Mary, the daughter, is away a good part
of the time now, for she goes to a boarding
school on Staten island. But when vaca-
tion comes she loses no time in getting
back to the lighthouse, where her little
nieces spend hours on sunny days in the
rope swing in which she passed a large
part OF her childhood, and which is sus-
pended from stout iron hooks driven into
the stone floor of the second balcony. She
has never known any other home than the
lighthouse, and her affection for it is deep.
She is, indeed, a child Of the sea, and, like
her supplemented, open-heaTted and
quantity old fashioned mother, she can in
teTpret it's every sign and mood. She loves
1t in summer calm and in winter storm
that hurls great waves against the lights
base until it trembles and dashes frozen