e. To be beaten by a hundred runs is bad, but
bearable; to be beaten by an innings and a hundred runs is humiliating
and horrible; to be beaten by a single run is exasperating and
intolerable.

The same thing meets us at every turn. A few minutes ago I picked up
the _Life of Lord Randolph Churchill_, by his son. In the very first
chapter there is a letter written by Dr. Creighton to the Duchess of
Marlborough commiserating her ladyship on the fact that Lord Randolph
had been placed in the second class at the December examinations at
Oxford. 'I must own,' the Bishop writes, 'that I was sorry when I
heard how narrowly Lord Randolph missed the first class; a few more
questions answered, and a few more omissions in some of his papers, and
he would have secured it. He was, I am told by the examiners, the best
man who was put into the second class; and the great hardship is, as
your Grace observes, that he should be in the same class with so many
who are greatly his inferior in knowledge and ability. It is rather
tantalizing to think that he came so near; _if he had been farther off
I should have been more content_.' Now that is exactly the misery of
the first mate. He is so near to being a skipper, so very near. He
even carries continually in his pocket the official papers that certify
that he is fully qualified to be a skipper. And yet, for all that, he
is not a skipper. Sometimes, indeed, he fancies that he will never be
a skipper. It is very trying. I am sorry--genuinely sorry--for the
first mate. What can I say to help him?

Perhaps the thing that he will most appreciate is a reminder of the
tremendous debt that the world owes to its first mates. I was reading
the other day Dasent's great _Life of Delane_. Among the most striking
documents printed in these five volumes are the letters that Delane
wrote from the seat of war during the struggle in the Crimea to the
substitute who occupied his own editorial chair in the office of _The
Times_. And the whole burden of those letters is to show that England
was saved in those days by a first mate. 'The admiral,' he says in one
letter, 'is by no means up to his position. The real commander is
Lyons, who is just another Nelson--full of energy and activity.' Two
days later, he says again, 'Nothing but the energy and determination of
Sir E. Lyons overcame the difficulties and "impossibilities" raised by
those who seem to have always a consistent objection to do