recked Mariners' Society
was instituted. I cannot say that such cases of rough handling were
frequent; but cases in which true-blue shipwrecked tars were treated as
impostors were numerous, so that, in those days, knaves and rascals
often throve as wrecked seamen, while the genuine and unfortunate men
were often turned rudely from door to door. This state of things does
not exist now. It _cannot_ exist now, for honorary agents of the
society are to be found on every part of our coasts, so that the moment
a wrecked man touches the land, no matter whether he be a Briton or a
foreigner, he is at once taken care of, clothed, housed, fed, supplied
with a little money, and forwarded to his home, or to the nearest consul
of his nation. The society has therefore accomplished two great and
good objects, for which the entire nation owes it a debt of gratitude;
it has rid the land of begging impostors clad in sailors' clothes, and
it has provided relief and assistance to the shipwrecked among our brave
and hardy seamen who are in every sense the bulwarks of our island, and
without whose labours, in the most perilous of all callings, Great
Britain would be one of the poorest and most uninfluential kingdoms on
the face of the earth.

But the society does a great deal more than that, for it comforts and
assists with money and advice hundreds and thousands of widows and
orphans whose husbands, fathers, or brothers have been drowned; and this
it does from year to year regularly--as regularly as the storms come and
scatter death and destruction on our shores. It cannot be too earnestly
impressed on the people of England, and especially on those who dwell
inland, that at least a thousand lives are lost, two thousand ships are
wrecked, and two millions sterling are thrown away upon the coasts of
this country _every year_.

It is owing to the untiring energy of the National Lifeboat Institution
that those figures are not much, _very_ much higher; and it is the
Shipwrecked Mariners' Society that alleviates much, _very_ much, of the
woe resulting from storms and wrecks upon our shores. Sailors and
fishermen know this well, and support both institutions largely. I
would that ladies and gentlemen knew this better, and felt that they
have a positive duty incumbent on them in regard to these societies, for
they are not local but _national_.

"Now, madam," said I, again addressing myself pointedly to Miss
Flouncer, "would you like to he