Well indeed would it be for the world if more of those to whom talents are given, and to whom stewardships are intrusted, and who stand watching the many who are in danger, overrun by the dark troubled waters of social life--wrecked in poverty, in misery, in ignorance--wrecked for want of true teaching, true guidance, true sympathy, true love--well would it be if more of these stewards of God's loans might have the same noble conviction written in upon their hearts: that they have _a call to save life_! Then would more lives grow noble by noble work, and become happy in the consciousness of the happy results, which God grants to the efforts of all those who humbly seek to live and labour for the good of others; grants to those who would sooner put to sea 'mid toil and peril, 'mid self-sacrifice and opposition, rather than let the life-boats God has given for their use rot and canker upon the banks, while the cries of the despairing and the lost plead in vain from the dark storms and troubled waters at their feet. Yes, surely; the humble boatmen of our coasts, our "Storm Warriors," afford a lesson by which many may well profit, in the noble self-sacrificing way in which they realize their mission--_that they have a call to save life_. "Who shall be the first coxswain of our new _Northumberland_ Prize Life-boat?" was the question asked by the Ramsgate Harbour Trustees some two and twenty years ago; and it was an important and anxious question; for the good boat required skilful handling to do efficient service, and if she failed in what was required and expected of her, the life-boat cause would receive a serious check. "No man better than James Hogben for the first coxswain; no man among them all holds a higher character for cool courage, and skill, and experience;" such was the answer. Hogben had been to sea since he was a lad; for some years he was sailing in a small vessel that traded between London and Ostend; then he sailed a little bit of a boat, of about fifteen tons, between Ramsgate and Dunkirk and Boulogne, winter and summer. Ask him about it now, and the dangers he used to run; and he shakes his head, and with a quiet smile tells you that, "He met with a good many very _whole_ breezes, very!" in that little craft of his. After that, he had nearly twenty years of hovelling; cruising about the Goodwin Sands in open luggers in the stormiest winter weather, till he almost knew the Sands by heart; and so James Hogben was appointed first coxswain of the Ramsgate life-boat.