e again on the familiar scenes of early days. What I beheld was a
fair picture--the Hamoaze, with its burden of shapely hulls, and its
beautiful undulating shores of wood and dell, lay glittering resplendent
at my feet. So still and peaceful was it all that the din of hammers,
the whir of machinery, and the voices of men were all blended in one
most musical cadence. Scores of pleasure-boats dot the lake-like surface
of the noble sheet of water, for the most part rowed by the lusty arms
of those amphibious creatures familiarly known as "Jack Tars," recently
let loose from the dear old "Model" or the equally dear "Academy." A
voice, bell-like and clear--surely that of a girl--invited my closer
attention; and yes, there she is! and not one only, but many ones,--one
in each boat, whom Jack is initiating into that wonderfully difficult
branch of navigation--a sailor's courtship!

Now, whatever anybody else may say to the contrary, I hold that the
British tar would scarcely be the "soaring soul" that he is were it not
for the influence--not always a beneficial influence, by the way, of the
softer sex. And here, a word for him with special respect to what people
are pleased to call his inconstancy. With all his vagaries, and from the
very nature of his calling he has many, I think there are few other
professions which would bear weighing in the balance with his and not be
found as wanting in this quality. True, none is so easily swayed, so
easily led; but the fault is not his, _that_ must be laid at the doors
of those who compel England's sailors to a forced banishment for long
periods of years, in lands where it is impossible the home influences
can reach them. Is it a matter of much wonderment, then, if he is swayed
by the new and intoxicating forms which pleasure takes in those
far-distant climes where the eye of Mrs. Grundy never penetrates?

A somewhat curious way in which to commence my narrative, say you? I
think so too, on re-reading it; but with your permission, I will not
dash my pen through it.

Let me, however, make sail and get under way with my yarn.

Cast we our eyes outward once again, beyond the boats with their
beautiful coxswains--I mean _hen_-swains--to where that huge glistening
iron mass floats proudly on the main. Reader, that object is the
heroine, if I may so say, of this very unromantic story. She is in
strange contrast with the numerous wooden veterans around her--relics
of Old England's fighting