dulgence. A good many years ago it was my lot to
write about one of those ships' companies on a certain sea, under certain
circumstances, in a book of no particular length.

That small group of men whom I tried to limn with loving care, but
sparing none of their weaknesses, was characterised by a friendly
reviewer as a lot of engaging ruffians. This gave me some food for
thought. Was it, then, in that guise that they appeared through the
mists of the sea, distant, perplexed, and simple-minded? And what on
earth is an "engaging ruffian"? He must be a creature of literary
imagination, I thought, for the two words don't match in my personal
experience. It has happened to me to meet a few ruffians here and there,
but I never found one of them "engaging." I consoled myself, however, by
the reflection that the friendly reviewer must have been talking like a
parrot, which so often seems to understand what it says.

Yes, in the mists of the sea, and in their remoteness from the rest of
the race, the shapes of those men appeared distorted, uncouth and
faint--so faint as to be almost invisible. It needed the lurid light of
the engines of war to bring them out into full view, very simple, without
worldly graces, organised now into a body of workers by the genius of one
of themselves, who gave them a place and a voice in the social scheme;
but in the main still apart in their homeless, childless generations,
scattered in loyal groups over all the seas, giving faithful care to
their ships and serving the nation, which, since they are seamen, can
give them no reward but the supreme "Well Done."

TRADITION--1918

"Work is the law. Like iron that lying idle degenerates into a mass of
useless rust, like water that in an unruffled pool sickens into a
stagnant and corrupt state, so without action the spirit of men turns to
a dead thing, loses its force, ceases prompting us to leave some trace of
ourselves on this earth." The sense of the above lines does not belong
to me. It may be found in the note-books of one of the greatest artists
that ever lived, Leonardo da Vinci. It has a simplicity and a truth
which no amount of subtle comment can destroy.

The Master who had meditated so deeply on the rebirth of arts and
sciences, on the inward beauty of all things,--ships' lines, women's
faces--and on the visible aspects of nature was profoundly right in his
pronouncement on the work that is done on the earth. From the ha