"Don't think of it, darling Willie. You might get wrecked,--perhaps drowned." But "darling Willie" does think of it, and asserts that being wrecked is the very thing he wants, and that he's willing to take his chance of being drowned! And Willie goes on thinking of it, year after year, until he gains his point, and becomes the family's "sailor boy," and mayhap, for the first time in her life, Willie's mother casts more than a passing glance at newspaper records of lifeboat work. But she does no more. She has not yet been awakened. "The people of the coast naturally look after the things of the coast," has been her sentiment on the subject--if she has had any definite sentiments about it at all. On returning from his first voyage Willie's ship is wrecked. On a horrible night, in the howling tempest, with his flaxen curls tossed about, his hands convulsively clutching the shrouds of the topmast, and the hissing billows leaping up as if they wished to lick him off his refuge on the cross-trees, Willie awakens to the dread reality about which he had dreamed when reading Cook and Crusoe. Next morning a lady with livid face, and eyes glaring at a newspaper, gasps, "Willie's ship--is--wrecked! five lost--thirteen saved by the lifeboat." One faint gleam of hope! "Willie may be among the thirteen!" Minutes, that seem hours, of agony ensue; then a telegram arrives, "_Saved, Mother-- thank God,--by the lifeboat_." "Ay, thank God," echoes Willie's mother, with the profoundest emotion and sincerity she ever felt; but think you, reader, that she did no more? Did she pass languidly over the records of lifeboat work after _that_ day? Did she leave the management and support of lifeboats to _the people of the coast_? I trow not. But what difference had the saving of Willie made in the lifeboat cause? Was hers the only Willie in the wide World? Are we to act on so selfish a principle, as that we shall decline to take an interest in an admittedly grand and good and national cause, until our eyes are forcibly opened by "our Willie" being in danger? Of course I address myself to people who have really kind and sympathetic hearts, but who, from one cause or another, have not yet had this subject earnestly submitted to their consideration. To those who have _no heart_ to consider the woes and necessities of suffering humanity, I have nothing whatever to say,--except,--God help them! Let me enforce this plea--that _inland_ cities and towns and villages should support the Lifeboat Institution--with another imaginary case.