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Show HE DESERVES IT. For almost half a century forty-seven forty-seven years, to bo exact John Harris kept the lighthouse at Winter island, off the coast of Massachusetts, and now he has been given a pension, We venture ven-ture the guess that everyone who reads this will say John Harris richly deserves de-serves that pension. His duties at the lighthouse made it necessary for him to be there at nightj' and, during his forty-seven years of service, he was 'never once outside tho beacon after dark. Ewmg the entire forty-seven years he, was never absent from his post except for five days, and during those five dayB he was always back in the lighthouse before sunset. Until his retirement last week and his removal to Salem, where Harris hopes to spend he remainder of his life getting acquainted with the world, ho had never seen a motion picture show, never ridden in an automobile, eaten in a restaurant or seen a city electrically lighted after dark. Although he is 75 years old now, Harris hopes to see many of the wonders that have arisen during tho half century he was tending a lighthouse light-house lamp. He admits that ho will have to travel fast, but he insists that his long term of the simple life has peculiarly pe-culiarly fitted him to take up the chase. It is extraordinary, to use a mild term, that a man should live and pass his timo for so many years less than fifty miles from great and busy centers of population and never crave to see what made them great and busy. Of a million men, how many would be able to do wdiat faithful John Harris did? At a guess, not more than a hundred. It is interesting mentally to speculate specu-late upon the temperament of a man who can livo forty-seven years of his life as John Harris lived his forty-seven forty-seven years. It is suggested that the reader try it in an idle moment and see how far and whither the speculation leads him. |