s us that one book of the sea that we have
never read (for the best of reasons: it has not been written) might
be done by Thomas Mosher, the veteran tippler of literary minims.
Mr. Mosher, we understand, "followed" the sea in his youth. Not long
ago, when Mr. Mosher published that exquisite facsimile of the 1855
"Leaves of Grass," we asked him when and how he first came in
contact with Whitman's work. He said:

I don't suppose there was anything particularly interesting
about my first acquaintance with Whitman, which at 14 years of
age I made in my old family mansion situated at Smith's Corner,
America. I had been taking "The Galaxy" from its start, only a
few months previous to the date I mention. I can still see
myself in the sitting room of the old house. Smith's Cor.,
America, I will remind you, is a portion of Biddeford, Me. An
extra "d" has got into the old English name--which, by the way,
only a year later I passed through after a shipwreck on the
Devonshire coast. (That was in 1867.) No one ever told me
anything about Walt.

These amateurish speculations on maritime books are of no value
except for the fact that they elicited an interesting letter from an
expert on these matters. William McFee wrote us as follows:--

"The first thing I laid my hands on this evening, while hunting
for some forgotten nugget of wisdom in my note-books filled
with Mediterranean brine, was that list of books for a
projected sea library. Perpend....

_The Sea Farer's Library_

Tom Cringle's Log Michael Scott
Two Years Before the Mast Dana
Midshipman Easy Marryat
Captains Courageous Kipling
The Flying Cloud Morley Roberts
The Cruise of the Cachalot Frank T. Bullen
Log of a Sea Waif Frank T. Bullen
The Salving of a Derelict Maurice Drake
The Grain Carriers Edward Noble
Marooned Clark Russell
Typhoon Conrad
Toilers of the Sea Hugo
An Iceland Fisherman Loti
The Sea Surgeon D'Annunzio
The Sea Hawk Sabatini

"A good many of these need no comment. Attention is dr