more expert in some special branch of his calling--such as
wire splicing, for instance; but for all-round competence, he was
unequalled. As character he was sterling stuff. His name was Anderson.
He had a fine, quiet face, kindly eyes, and a voice which matched that
something attractive in the whole man. Though he looked yet in the prime
of life, shoulders, chest, limbs untouched by decay, and though his hair
and moustache were only iron-grey, he was on board ship generally called
Old Andy by his fellows. He accepted the name with some complacency.

I made my enquiry at the highly-glazed entry office. The clerk on duty
opened an enormous ledger, and after running his finger down a page,
informed me that Anderson had gone to sea a week before, in a ship bound
round the Horn. Then, smiling at me, he added: "Old Andy. We know him
well, here. What a nice fellow!"

I, who knew what a "good man," in a sailor sense, he was, assented
without reserve. Heaven only knows when, if ever, he came back from that
voyage, to the Sailors' Home of which he was a faithful client.

I went out glad to know he was safely at sea, but sorry not to have seen
him; though, indeed, if I had, we would not have exchanged more than a
score of words, perhaps. He was not a talkative man, Old Andy, whose
affectionate ship-name clung to him even in that Sailors' Home, where the
staff understood and liked the sailors (those men without a home) and did
its duty by them with an unobtrusive tact, with a patient and humorous
sense of their idiosyncrasies, to which I hasten to testify now, when the
very existence of that institution is menaced after so many years of most
useful work.

Walking away from it on that day eighteen years ago, I was far from
thinking it was for the last time. Great changes have come since, over
land and sea; and if I were to seek somebody who knew Old Andy it would
be (of all people in the world) Mr. John Galsworthy. For Mr. John
Galsworthy, Andy, and myself have been shipmates together in our
different stations, for some forty days in the Indian Ocean in the early
nineties. And, but for us two, Old Andy's very memory would be gone from
this changing earth.

Yes, things have changed--the very sky, the atmosphere, the light of
judgment which falls on the labours of men, either splendid or obscure.
Having been asked to say a word to the public on behalf of the Sailors'
Home, I felt immensely flattered--and troubled. F