Part 1 (2/2)

IN WHOSE LIVES ARE FOUND THE SOURCE AND MAINSPRING OF SOME OF THE EFFORTS OF THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK IN HIS LATER YEARS

Along an island in the North Sea, five e of rocks that has proved the graveyard ofthat turbulent sea On this island once lived a group of men who, as each vessel recked, looted the vessel and overnment of the Netherlands decided to exter Williaue

”I want you to clean up that island,” was the royal order It was a for man of twenty-odd years By royal proclamation he was madeestablished, the young attorney was appointed judge; and in that dual capacity he ”cleaned up” the island

The young an to look around for a horeen of any kind; it was as if aly only because it is not beautiful And beautiful he deter ether his council ”We must have trees,” he said; ”we can make this island a spot of beauty if ill!” But the practical seafaring men demurred; the little ent than trees

”Very well,” was the uessed what the words were destined to mean--”I will do it myself” And that year he planted one hundred trees, the first the island had ever seen

”Too cold,” said the islanders; ”the severe north winds and storms will kill them all”

”Then I will plant more,” said the unperturbed mayor And for the fifty years that he lived on the island he did so He planted trees each year; and, overnment land which he turned into public squares and parks, and where each spring he set out shrubs and plants

Moistened by the salt iously In all that expanse of turbulent sea--and only those who have seen the North Sea in a storround on which the birds, storht Hundreds of dead birds often covered the surface of the sea Then one day the trees had grown tall enough to look over the sea, and, spent and driven, the first birds came and rested in their leafy shelter And others caratitude vent in song Within a few years so many birds had discovered the trees in this new island home that they attracted the attention not only of the native islanders but also of the people on the shore five miles distant, and the island became farateful were the birds for their resting-place that they chose one end of the island as a special spot for the laying of their eggs and the raising of their young, and they fairly peopled it It was not long before ornithologists fro-land,” as the farthermost point of the island caht, not of thousands but of hundreds of thousands of bird-eggs

A pair of storales had now found the island and mated there; their wonderful notes thrilled even the souls of the natives; and as dusk fell upon the seabound strip of land the women and children would co notes of the birds of golden song The two nightingales soon grew into a colony, and within a few years so rich was the island in its nightingales that over to the Dutch coast and throughout the land and into other countries spread the fatrees each year, setting out his shrubbery and plants, until their verdure now beautifully shaded the quaint, narrow lanes, and transformed into wooded roads what once had been only barren wastes

Artists began to hear of the place and brought their canvases, and on the walls of hundreds of ho to-day bits of the beautiful lanes and wooded spots of ”The Island of Nightingales”

The American artist, William M Chase, took his pupils there almost annually ”In all the world to-day,” he declared to his students, as they exclaimed at the natural cool restfulness of the island, ”there is no more beautiful place”

The trees are now ht of forty orattorney went to the island and planted the first tree; to-day the churchyard where he lies is a bower of cool green, with the trees that he planted dropping their rave

This much did one man do But he did more

After he had been on the barren island two years he went to the ht back with him a bride It was a bleak place for a bridal ho wife had the qualities of the husband ”While you raise your trees,” she said, ”I will raise our children” And within a score of years the young bride sent thirteen happy-faced, well-brought-up children over that island, and there was reared a hoiven to few Said a hter of that home: ”It was such a home that once you had been in it you felt you hters you would have been glad to have rown to ether and said to them, ”I want to tell you the story of your father and of this island,” and she told them the simple story that is written here

”And now,” she said, ”as you go out into the world I want each of you to take with you the spirit of your father's work, and each, in your oay and place, to do as he has done: make you the world a bit more beautiful and better because you have been in it That is your e to you”

The first son to leave the island home ith a band of hardy men to South Africa, where they settled and became known as ”the Boers”

Tirelessly they worked at the colony until towns and cities sprang up and a new nation ca: The Transvaal Republic The son became secretary of state of the new country, and to-day the United States of South Africa bears tribute, in part, to the e to ”make the world a bit more beautiful and better”

The second son left hoe of a small parish; and when he had finished his work he was y his own safety, plunged into the boiling surf on one of those nights of terror so common to that coast, rescued a half-dead sailor, carried hiht hiave the world a record of imperishable value For the half-drowned sailor was Heinrich Schliemann, the fahter now left the island nest; to her inspiration her husband owed, at his life's close, a shelf of works in philosophy which to-day are a the standard books of their class

The second daughter worked beside her husband until she brought hiarded as one of the ablest preachers of his land, speaking for e of iven to sit wisely in the councils of his land; another followed the footsteps of his father Another daughter, refusing e for duty, ministered unto and made a home for one whose eyes could see not