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the Hooghly pilot steamer before the command of the Torrens came in his way. But I had no reason to believe that he remembered me particularly. However, on hearing from his brother that I was ashore, he sent me word that the Torrens wanted a chief officer, as a matter that might interest me. I was then recovering slowly from a bad breakdown,
    after a most unpleasant and persistent tropical disease which I had caught in Africa while commanding a steamer on the River Congo. Yet the temptation was great. I confessed to him by doubts of my fitness for the post, from the point of view of health. But he said that moping ashore never did any one any good, and was very encouraging. It was clear that, as the saying goes, “my looks did not pity me,” for he argued that, so far as appearance went, there did not seem to be anything the matter with me. And I suppose I could never have been half as neurasthenic as our poor passenger who wanted to be put ashore, for I lasted out for two voyages, as my discharge prove, though Mr. Basil Lubbock, in his book, ‘The Colonial Clippers,” credits me with only one. But in the end I had to go (and even stay) ashore. Thus my famous contemporary outlived me at sea by many years, and if she had perhaps a harder life of it than I, it was at least untinged with unavailing regrets; and she escaped the ignominious fate of being laid up as a coal hulk, which so many of her sisters had to suffer. Mr. Lubbock, who can put so much interesting knowledge and right feeling into his studies of our merchant ships, calls her “The Wonderful Torrens.” She was! Her fascinations and virtues have made their marks on the hearts of men. Only last year I received a letter from a young able seaman, whom I remembered having in my watch, invoking confidently her unforgotten name. “I feel sure you must be Mr. Conrad, the chief officer, in whose watch I was when serving in the Torrens ‘xw 1891, and so I venture to write to you. ...” A friendly, quiet, middle-aged seaman’s letter, which gave me the greatest pleasure. And I know of a retired sailor (a Britisher, I suppose), in Massachusetts, who is making a model in loving memory of her who, all her life, was so worthy of men’s loyal service. I am sorry I had no time to go to see him, and to gaze at the pious work of his hands.
    It is touching to read in Mr. Lubbock’s book that, after her transfer to the Italian flag, when she was taken to Genoa to be broken up, the Genoese shipwrights were so moved by the beauty of her lines and the perfections of her build that they had no heart to break her up. They went to work instead to preserve her life for a few more years. A true labour of love, if ever there was one!
    But in the end her body of iron and wood, so fair to look upon, had to be broken up — I hope with fitting reverence; and as I sit here, thirty years, almost to a day, since I last set eyes on her, I love to think that her perfect form found a merciful end on the shores of the sunlit sea of my boyhood’s dreams, and that her fine spirit has returned to dwell in the regions of the great winds, the inspirers and the companions of her swift, renowned, sea-tossed life, which I, too, have been permitted to share for a little while.
     

CHRISTMAS DAY AT SEA
     
    Theologically Christmas Day is the greatest occasion for rejoicing offered to sinful mankind; but this aspect of it is so august and so great that the human mind refuses to contemplate it steadily, perhaps because of its own littleness, for which of course it is in no way to blame. It prefers to concentrate its attention on ceremonial observances, expressive generally of good will and festivity, such, for instance, as giving presents and eating plum-puddings. It may be said at once here that from that conventional point of view the spirit of Christmas Day at sea appears distinctly weak. The opportunities, the materials too, are lacking. Of course, the ship’s company get a plum-pudding of some sort, and when the captain appears on deck for the first time the officer of the morning watch greets him with a “Merry Christmas, sir,” in a tone only moderately effusive. Anything more would be, owing to the difference in station, not correct. Normally he may expect a return for this in the shape of a “The same to you” of a nicely graduated heartiness. He does not get it always, however.
    One Christmas morning, many years ago (I was young then and anxious to do the correct thing), my