She’s always used and she’s always knowed,
  For there isn’t a blooming wind can blow
  In all the latitudes, high or low,
  Nor there isn’t a kind of sea that rolls,
  From both the Tropics to both the Poles,
  But she’s knowed ’em all since she sailed sou’ Spain,
  She’s weathered the lot, and she’ll do it again,
    The same as she’s done before.

  And sail or steam or coasting craft, the big ships with the small,
  The barges which were steamers once, the hulks that once were tall,
  They wanted tonnage cruel bad, and so they fetched ’em all.

  And some went out as fighting-craft and shipped a fighting crew,
  But most they tramped the same old road they always used to do,
  With a crowd of merchant-sailormen, as might be me or you ...

  With a lick o’ paint and a bucket o’ tar,
    And she’s fit for the seas once more,
  To carry the Duster near and far,
    The same as she used before;
  The same old Rag on the same old round,
  Bar Light vessel and Puget Sound,
  Brass and Bonny and Grand Bassam,
  Both the Rios and Rotterdam—­
  Dutch and Dagoes, niggers and Chinks,
  Palms and fire-flies, spices and stinks—­
  Portland (Oregon), Portland (Maine),
  She’s been there once and she’ll go there again,
    The same as she’s been before.

* * * * *

Their bones are strewed to every tide from Torres Strait to Tyne—­
God’s truth, they’ve paid their blooming dues to the tin-fish and
the mine,
By storm or calm, by night or day, from Longships light to Line.

With a bomb or a mine or a bursting shell,
And she’ll follow the seas no more,
She’s fetched and carried and served you well,
The same as she’s done before—­
They’ve fetched and carried and gone their way,
As good ships should and as brave men may ... 
And we’ll build ’em still, and we’ll breed ’em again,
The same good ships and the same good men,
The same—­the same—­the same as we’ve done before!

  C.F.S.

* * * * *

A FIRST-CLASS MISDEMEANANT.

Cozens has a conscience—­a conformist conscience—­and is a first-class season-ticket holder.

The other morning we were travelling up to town together as usual.  He was evidently bursting with the anticipatory pride of telling me something very much to his credit.  Presently, at a gap in my reading, he said:—­

“I left my season at home this morning, so I bought a return.”

“What on earth for?” I expostulated.  “You’ve already paid the company once by taking out a season; why pay twice?  And anyhow it’s only the Government.”

“It’s the first duty of a citizen to obey the laws of his country,” he proclaimed sententiously.

“Oh, all right; but you’ll never get your money back—­not from the Government.  Besides, you could easily have got through without a ticket.”