"Once more their weird laughter of the loons comes to my ear, the distance lends it a musical, melancholy sound.  For a dangerous ledge off the lighthouse island floats in on the still air the gentle trolling of a warning bell as it swings on the rocking buoy; it might be tolling for the passing of summer and sweet weather with that persistent, pensive chime."

-- From the writer Celia Thaxter, who spent much of her life on Appledore Island, in the Isles of Shoals, off New Hampshire.