The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-11-01
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 N rocking and dancing in a Decem- 4 Der wind off the Atlantic, which had turned. as night came on. into a gale Except for the chance respite of January thaw, Fire Island. last outpost of the United States for outgoing vessels, first sight of home for the incoming, would be until March a lost and isolated corner of the world. There would be no newspapers, no letters; only the one tel egraph key to keep a score of Wlnter- bound people in touch with New horA' that antithesis of their solitude whose lights on cloudy winter evenings, made a blaze along the northwestern horizon.
 In darkness, the tower appeared only as a splotoh of light away up in the air. In the regular sweeping flashes of the re- Volving light it appeared as a closed struc- ture of painted steel, rising 90 feet rom the sand hill at it's base to the little roonl' all blazing windows, of it's summit. sum mer and winter the lights behind those windows burn all night; and all night man with a telescope sits within, that New York may know over it's breakfast coffee, how this liner has been sighted bringing home the girls; how that schoon- CT is off Fire Island with cargoes for the firm.
 His feet on the desk beside his tele-' graph key, cushion behind him for com ! ing law. Presently an alarm clock at his elbow. overlaid with curious contrivances of electric wires, gave a sharp ring. He dropped his feet from the desk, closed Pollock on Torts," kicked shut the door of his fierce little stove and crossed to one of the wooden chutes which kept the wind from his long telescope. As he open ed the lid a race of wind plunged i'll, stinging his face with sand and spume blown from the beach high as a swallow flies Defending his cheeks with hand kerchief, he trained his glass on that cor ner of the horizon from which incoming vessels first show their lights, took a long look, closed the chute. Then he peered through an unfrosted corner or the seaward window and watched the At lantic as it became visible in the flashes of the revolving light. Because it was December and he had another closed sea- son on Fire Island to face, there came over him again that terror of the ocean and of loneliness which he had felt all last Winter-hs first on Fire Island His was an especial loneliness and night, for Burke, his assistant, a graduate surfman, who handled a telegraph key like be- laying pin, had been called ashore with the last boat to the mainland. Burke's wife who elected to winter away from the island was sick If the ice held hard, l Burke might be able to get back, when she recovered by scooter" that queer craft which is half ice boat and half wa i ter boat and master of both ice and water Until Burkes return, Woodford, l sleeping by snatches of an hour and de- i pending on his alarm clock to wake him l for observations, must keep watch all night and all day.
 The general manager had assigned him l to Fire Island on his own application. l He was studying law; he wanted to be | fsa1a lral1 | tor some day. He knew of this billet away out in the ocean-little to do eX- l cept to keep Vigilant-a solitude which would drive him to study.
 l It had not been so hard the first sum mer, when the old operator was training him how to catch the topmast of incom- ing vessels to make out their rigs be- fore the unskilled landsman could see even a speck on the ocean. There was summer hotel down on the beach; pie nic parties made their way across from the mainland of Sundays; and although Woodford did not much care for the kind of people they brought, and espec- ially for the kind of girl, they gave an air of company and life to the beach.
 September came and went. The hotel closed, the excursions came no more. Burke sent his family over to Babylon, across the bay, and winter locked the island. There came storms, like the one rocking the tower tonight; times when it swayed as in an earthquake, when 1t took all of his manhood to keep him up there on his perch. And the sea was full i of strange whispering people and the i night air alive with devils.
 l In the winter colony there were the surfmen at the life-saving station a mile away, the lighthouse people, he and Burke Among them all were just three women. One was the wife of the captain at the station; a hard and heroic woman she was, capable of swimming through the breakers to rescue an exhausted surf man and of skipping him for a fool when i she had pumped the water out of him. l Captain Baxter, the head lighthouse keep l CT, was q widoWer, with two grown un- married daughters. Once, when the first i longings of solitude came over him, 1 Woodford had plowed through sand and l snow to call on the Baxter girls of an l evening. They were a little surprised. l Their father-it was his watch off-sat l in the room all through the call and did most of the talking. He learned in time that solitude begets the habit of solitude: 1 that by kind of perverse etiquette these exiles never troubled one another except l in time of necessity.
 l It was, perhaps, January and the 1 son had settled down over Fire Island, ] when the hardest pain of solitude came upon Woodford. It began as a longing | which made him quiet and moody, drove 1 the law out of his head as fast as he l learned it, sent him on long walks in which he bucked the Atlantic winds un- l til the breath was out of his lungs. Hat red of the solitude became an insanity. 1 Burke used to watch him sometimes of nights.
 You're a-thinking too much" said l Burke. One night he added:
 Its the girl idea you've got in your head. I've had it! Just to stand on i Broadway or maybe even in Jamaica or Babylon, and women passing, and think about somebody to take care of | you and tidie5 the backs of the chairs and the helping hand when you're sick. You aint "A yet; you're young for this kind of thing"
 When he had chewed upon this and I convinced himself that Burke was right, 1 Woodford had done sweetly foolish thing. Although he was a pleasing youth, with a fine clean face, 8. code of honor square and true, if undeveloped, and gen. tie manners, there had never been any girl really in his life. He resolved to make a girl, to create her out of thin air-hs
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