only see the prints and pictures and models which were offered for sale, they would own, I fancy, that if the Mission had done no more than abolish the traffic in literary and other abominations, it has done much.  A few somewhat particular folk object to supplying the men with cheap tobacco, but any who knows what intense relief is given to an overworked man by the pipe will hardly heed the objection much.  After a heavy spell of work, a seaman smokes for a few minutes before the slumberous lethargy creeps round his limbs, and he is all the better for the harmless narcotic.

In this land of plethoric riches there are crowds of people who treat philanthropy as a sort of investment; they place money in a sinking fund and they forego all interest.  We want to show them one line of investment wherein they may at least see plenty of results for their money.  Speaking for myself, I should like to see money which is amassed by Englishmen concentrated for the benefit of other Englishmen.  Looking at the matter from a cool and business-like point of view, I can see that every effort made to keep our fishermen in touch with the mass of their countrymen, is a step towards national insurance—­if we put it on no higher ground.  In the old days the fisher had no country; he knew his own town, but the idea of Britain as a power—­as a mother of nations—­never occurred to him; the swarming millions of inland dwellers were nothing to him, and he could not even understand the distribution of the wares which he landed.  The Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen has brought him into friendly contact with much that is best among his countrymen; he is no longer exiled for months together among thousands of ignorant celibates like himself; he finds that his fortunes are matters for vivid interest with numbers of people whose very existence was once like a hazy dream to him; and, above all, he is brought into contact during long days with sympathetic and refined men, who incidentally teach him many things which go far beyond the special subjects touched by amateur or professional missionaries.  A gentleman of breeding and education meets half a dozen smacksmen in a little cabin, and the company proceed to talk informally.  Well, at one time the seamen’s conversation ran entirely on trivialities—­or on fish.  As soon as the subject of Fish was exhausted, the exiles growled their comments on Joe’s new mainsail, or the lengthening of Jimmy’s smack; but nowadays the men’s horizon is widened, and the little band of half a dozen who meet the missionary are eager to learn, and eager to express their own notions in their own simple fashion.  The gentleman, of course, shows his fine manners by granting attention to all his rough friends when they talk, and the smacksmen find that, instead of a preacher only, a man who withdraws himself to his private cabin when his discourse has been delivered, they have among them a kindly fellow-worker, who enters with the true spirit of camaraderie