orrows that are softened by being told. Of
the French crews I began with here, not one of the first few could even
read, while five or six English steamboats took books for all their men.
On a preceding Sunday (at Erith), I did not meet one man, even a bargee
who could not read, and all up the Seine only one in this predicament.
Truly there is a sea-mission yet to be worked. Good news was told on the
water long ago, and by the Great Preacher from a boat.

And while thus giving these books and papers to others, it may perhaps be
allowed us also to add a few reflections suggested on returning from the
scenes and people we have sailed amongst abroad. New scenes ought to be
to the mind what fresh air is to the body, reviving it for work as well
as gladdening it with play; and perhaps one can do more for human misery
by withdrawing now and then from its close contact, than by constant
action in its midst. Yet it must be admitted that the first impressions
on one's return from such a long vacation as the Rob Roy had are
painfully acute. To come back and read up in an hour the diary of the
three months' work of our "Boys' Beadle" (the agent employed by the
Reformatory Union to look after and attend to the uncared-for street
children), is to resume one's post of contemplation of the dreadful
picture of woe which crowds an endless canvas with suffering figures, and
each case delineated in such a report means far more behind to the eye
that can realize. Again, to walk past St. George's Hospital next day and
observe the stream of visitors with anxious steps going up the stairs,
and those coming down with kind and thoughtful looks, as they leave their
dearest relatives, and confidingly, in strangers' hands, and to think
what is up there. To find in letters awaiting one's return the gaps made
by death in the circle of acquaintance. These are salutary and sudden
shocks to self-enjoyment of health and whole limbs, and they are loud
calls for more than a gush of sympathy or a song of thankfulness, but for
downright help by practical work. Still greater was the change from
bounding along in florid health on merry waves of the wholesome sea, to a
walk through the east end of London,--that morass of vice, and sighs, and
savagery,--what is forced on the senses in an hour being not a hundredth
of what is sunk below.

Perhaps it is well we do not always realize the amount of evil around us,
of bad, I mean, that can be made good by e