. I've 'ad my fling, an' I know wot's
wot. An' I tell you, where's wimmen is trouble--screechin' an' carryin'
on, fightin', cuttin', bobbies, magistrates, an' a month's 'ard labour
back of it all, an' no pay-day when you come out."

"But a wife and children," I insisted. "A home of your own, and all
that. Think of it, back from a voyage, little children climbing on your
knee, and the wife happy and smiling, and a kiss for you when she lays
the table, and a kiss all round from the babies when they go to bed, and
the kettle singing and the long talk afterwards of where you've been and
what you've seen, and of her and all the little happenings at home while
you've been away, and--"

"Garn!" he cried, with a playful shove of his fist on my shoulder. "Wot's
yer game, eh? A missus kissin' an' kids clim'in', an' kettle singin',
all on four poun' ten a month w'en you 'ave a ship, an' four nothin' w'en
you 'aven't. I'll tell you wot I'd get on four poun' ten--a missus
rowin', kids squallin', no coal t' make the kettle sing, an' the kettle
up the spout, that's wot I'd get. Enough t' make a bloke bloomin' well
glad to be back t' sea. A missus! Wot for? T' make you mis'rable?
Kids? Jest take my counsel, matey, an' don't 'ave 'em. Look at me! I
can 'ave my beer w'en I like, an' no blessed missus an' kids a-crying for
bread. I'm 'appy, I am, with my beer an' mates like you, an' a good ship
comin', an' another trip to sea. So I say, let's 'ave another pint. Arf
an' arf's good enough for me."

Without going further with the speech of this young fellow of two-and-
twenty, I think I have sufficiently indicated his philosophy of life and
the underlying economic reason for it. Home life he had never known. The
word "home" aroused nothing but unpleasant associations. In the low
wages of his father, and of other men in the same walk in life, he found
sufficient reason for branding wife and children as encumbrances and
causes of masculine misery. An unconscious hedonist, utterly unmoral and
materialistic, he sought the greatest possible happiness for himself, and
found it in drink.

A young sot; a premature wreck; physical inability to do a stoker's work;
the gutter or the workhouse; and the end--he saw it all as clearly as I,
but it held no terrors for him. From the moment of his birth, all the
forces of his environment had tended to harden him, and he viewed his
wretched, inevitable future with a callousness and unc