y we had Mac's card to prove it.

We had long wanted to see Mr. McFee in his sea-going quarters,
where he writes his books and essays (so finely flavoured with a
rich ironical skepticism as to the virtues of folk who live on
shore). Never was a literary sanctum less like the pretentious
studios of the imitation litterateurs. In a small cabin stood our
friend, in his working dungarees (if that is what they are called)
talking briskly with the Chief and another engineer. The
conversation, in which we were immediately engulfed, was so
vivacious that we had small chance to examine the surroundings as we
would have liked to. But save for the typewriter on the desk and a
few books in a rack, there was nothing to suggest literature.
"Plutarch's Lives," we noticed--a favourite of Mac's since boyhood;
Frank Harris's "The Bomb" (which, however, the Chief insisted
belonged to him), E.S. Martin's "Windfalls of Observation," and some
engineering works. We envied Mac the little reading lamp at the head
of his bunk.

We wish some of the soft-handed literary people who bleat about only
being able to write in carefully purged and decorated surroundings
could have a look at that stateroom. In just such compartments Mr.
McFee has written for years, and expected to finish that night (in
the two hours each day that he is able to devote to writing) his
tale, "Captain Macedoine's Daughter." As we talked there was a
constant procession of in-comers, most of them seeming to the opaque
observation of the layman to be firemen discussing matters of
overtime. On the desk lay an amusing memorandum, which the Chief
referred to jocularly as one of Mac's "works," anent some problem
of whether the donkeyman was due certain overtime on a Sunday when
the _Turrialba_ lay in Hampton Roads waiting for coal. On the cabin
door was a carefully typed list marked in Mr. McFee's hand "Work to
Do." It began something like this:

_Main Engine Pump-Link Brasses
Fill Up Main Engine Feed Pump and Bilge Rams
Open and Scale After Port Boiler
Main Circulator Impeller to Examine
Hydrokineter Valve on Centre Boiler to be Rejointed_

The delightful thing about Mr. McFee is that he can turn from these
things, which he knows and loves, to talk about literary problems,
and can out-talk most literary critics at their own game.

He took us through his shining engines, showing us some of the
beauty spots--the Weir pumps and the refrig