God's blessing, will continue
to carry our flag, our merchandise, and our bibles, to the ends of the
earth, and guard our shores, as in days of old, from the foot of every
foreign foe. England can never fully appreciate how much she owes to
her seamen. The thousands of our inland population have a very
inadequate conception of the race of heroes by which our coasts are
peopled. Bax is no exaggerated specimen, got up, in these sensation
days, for effect. It is a glorious fact,--proved by the hard and bare
statistics furnished annually by the Board of Trade, and from other
sources,--that his name is legion, and that the men of whom he is a type
swarm all round our coasts, from the old Ultima Thule to the Land's End.

Yes, Tommy was in good training. He had begun well. He was evidently a
chip of the elder block. It did not, indeed, occur to his young
imagination to suppose that he could ever become anything in the most
distant degree resembling his idol Bax. Neither did he entertain any
definite idea as to what his young heart longed after; but he had seen
life saved; he had stood on the sea-shore when storms cast shattered
wrecks upon the sands, and had witnessed the exploits of boatmen in
their brave efforts to save human life; he had known what it was to weep
when the rescuer perished with those whom he sought to save, and he had
helped to swell with his tiny voice, the bursting cheer of triumph, when
men, women, and children were plucked, as if by miracle, from the raging
sea! To take part in those deeds of heroism was the leading desire in
the boy's life; and now it seemed as if his career were commencing in
earnest, and the day-dreams in which he had so long indulged were at
last about to become waking realities.

CHAPTER FOUR.

IN WHICH INTRODUCTIONS STILL GO ON, AND COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS
BEFORE.

Mrs Maria Foster,--the widow of James Foster (formerly captain in the
merchant service), the mother of Guy Foster (clerk in the firm of
Denham, Crumps, and Company), and the promoter or supporter of every
good cause,--was a little woman of five-and-forty or thereabouts, with
mild blue eyes, a philanthropic heart, and pale blue ribbons in her cap.

Mrs Foster may be said to have been in easy circumstances. That is to
say, she had sufficient (being a thrifty and economical lady) to "make
the two ends meet," even to overlap somewhat, though not,--as a friend
of ours once observed,--to tie in a ha