entions to vanish as
soon as the predatory gentlemen with their seductive methods
make their appearance. Agencies such as the Church of
England Missions to Seamen and the Wesleyan Methodist
Mission are to be thanked for the hard efforts made to keep
the sailor out of harm, and to reclaim those who have
fallen. They may be thanked also for having been the means
of diminishing, if not altogether extirpating, a loathsome
tribe of ruffians who were accustomed to feast on their
blood. These Missions are a Godsend not only to the sailor,
but to the nation. No other agency has done the work they
are doing. The Church is apt, to gather its robes round a
cantish respectability, and call out "Save the people," and
the flutter falls flat on the seats. These missions owe any
success they have had to going _to_ the people.

A few wholesome women are worth scores of men in getting at
sailors--or for that matter in getting at anybody else, and
the importance of getting more of them attached to the work
should not be overlooked. The sailor is a person of moods.
Sometimes it is religion, and sometimes it is something very
different, and it is only those women who have grace, comely
looks and supreme tact, and who carry with them a halo of
bright cheerfulness, who can deal successfully with cases
of this kind. The long-faced, too much sanctified female,
doling out fixed quantities of monotonous nothings, is an
abomination, and is calculated to drive man into chronic
debauchery. One look from this kind of awful female is a
deadly agony, and much effort should be used to avoid her.
But there are even men engaged in religious work, whose
agonising look would give any person of refined senses the
"jumps." What earthly use are such creatures to men who
crave for brightness and hope to be put into their lives,
and the passion of love to be beamed into their souls? If
people would only bear in mind that it is always difficult
to find a real soul behind a flinty face, a vast amount of
mischief would be obviated by making more suitable
selections for philanthropic and religious work. Of course
there is more needed than a pleasant look. It is imperative
that there should be combined with it knowledge, and the
knack of communicating it. All denominations have wasters
thrust upon them, sometimes by the ambition of parents that
their sons should be ministers, and sometimes by the
unbounded belief of the young men themselves in their
fitness. B