t books of the
sea? Without pondering very deeply on the matter, and confining
ourself to prose, we would suggest the following as our own
favourites:

_Typhoon, by Joseph Conrad
The Nigger of the "Narcissus," by Joseph Conrad
The Mirror of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad
Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling
The Brassbounder, by David W. Bone
Salt of the Sea, by Morley Roberts
Mr. Midshipman Easy, by Captain Marryat
The Wreck of the "Grosvenor," by Clark Russell
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
An Ocean Tramp, by William McFee._

If one is allowed to include books that deal partially with salt
water, one would have to add "Treasure Island," "Casuals of the
Sea," by McFee, and "Old Junk," by Tomlinson. The kind of
shallow-water sea tales that we love to read after supper, with our
feet on the nearest chair and a decent supply of tobacco handy, are
the delicious stories by W.W. Jacobs. Dana's "Two Years Before the
Mast," which is spoken of as a classic, we have never read. We have
always had a suspicion of it, we don't know why. Before we tackle it
we shall re-read "The Water Babies." We have always found a good
deal of innocent cheer in the passages in John Woolman's Journal
describing his voyage from Philadelphia to London in 1772. Friend
Woolman, like the sturdy Quaker that he was, was horrified (when he
went to have a look at the ship _Mary and Elizabeth_) to find
"sundry sorts of carved work and imagery" on that part of the vessel
where the cabins were; and in the cabins themselves he observed
"some superfluity of workmanship of several sorts." This subjected
his mind to "a deep exercise," and he decided that he would have to
take passage in the steerage instead of the cabin. Having our self
made use of the steerage aforetime, both in the _Mauretania_ and
humbler vessels, we feel a certain kindred sympathy for his
experiences. We have always enjoyed his remark: "The wind now blew
vehemently, and the sea wrought to that degree that an awful
seriousness prevailed."

To come to poetry, we suppose that the greatest sea-poet who never
ventured on anything more perilous than a ferry-boat was Walt
Whitman. Walt, one likes to think, would have been horribly sea-sick
if he had ventured out beyond the harbour buoy. A good deal of
Walt's tempestuous uproar about the glories of America was
undoubtedly due to the fact that he had never seen anything else.
Speaking of Walt remind