ges, which were
given as occasion admitted to all sorts of people, and everywhere
accepted with thanks, so that we could only regret the limit imposed on
the number to be carried in a canoe, where every ounce of weight added to
the muscular toil.

Relieved now from this restriction, the Rob Roy yawl was able to load
several boxes of this literary cargo, most of them kindly granted for the
special purpose of her voyage.

These presents were given away from day to day, and especially on Sunday
afternoons, among the sailors and water-population wherever the Rob Roy
roved. Thousands of seamen can read, and have time, but no books.
Bargees lolling about, or prone in the sun, eagerly began a 'Pilgrim's
Progress' when thus presented, and sometimes went on reading for hours.
Fishermen came off in boats to ask for them, policemen and soldiers, too,
begged for a book, and then asked for another for 'a child at school.'
Smart yachtsmen were most grateful of all, and some even offered to pay
for them; the navvies, lock-keepers, ferrymen, watermen, porters,
dockmen, and guard-men of lighthouses, piers, and hulks, as well as many
a Royal Navy blue-jacket, gratefully accepted these little souvenirs with
every appearance of gratitude.

The distribution of these was thus no labour, but a constant pleasure to
me. Permanent and positive good may have been done by the reading of
their contents; at any rate, they opened up conversation, gave scope to
courteous intercourse, often leading to kinder interest. They opened to
me many new scenes of life, and some with darker passages and sorrowful
groups in the evident but untold background. They were, in fact, the
speediest possible introductions by which to meet at once with large
bodies of fellow-men too much unknown to us, therefore forgotten, and
then despised. The strata of society are not to be all crushed into a
pulpy mass, but a wholesome mingling betimes does good, both to the heavy
dregs below and to the 'creme' on the very top.

Thus encouraged, we launch the little dingey on Sunday for three or four
hours' rowing, and with a large leather bag well filled at starting but
empty on its return; and instead of its contents we bring back in our
memory a whole series of tales, characters, and incidents of water-craft
life, some tragic, others comic, many 'hum-drum' enough, but still
instructive, suggestive, branching out into hidden lives one would like
to draw forth, and telling s