Even with all the care imaginable in cutting, a bad workman will spoil the set of a sail by not keeping the right amount of stress upon each cloth as he stitches. It would not be an easy task to cut out a sail if the material were all in one piece; when it is made up of a number of pieces as it is, the work needs a master of the trade in order to produce a well-finished article. And when it is remembered that some sails will contain forty-five cloths of canvas, each ten yards long, canvas, too, that is stout enough for the heaviest work that ship-sails are called upon to do, it ought to be seen that sailmaking has nothing in it of the nature of unskilled labour at all. In fact, so much skill is required for sailmaking, so much innate ability, that it may be truly said of the perfect sailmaker that, like the perfect tailor's cutter, he is born, not made. Even then the dead hand of tradition weighs heavily upon the sailmaker. Certain fashions in sail-cutting exist in this country which are scouted in America as being in the last degree clumsy. And the Yankee sailmaker goes so far as to say that a British sailmaker cannot cut a sail! This taunt does really seem justified to an impartial observer when looking at the difference between a British and American ship's sails set side by side. I have often seen a new set of sails hoisted on board a British ship that looked more like a miscellaneous collection of rags hung out to dry than the "white wings" famous in song. And it was not till long after, when a great deal of stretching and humouring had taken place, that the sails came to look at all neat and unwrinkled. I don't know whether it is justifiable in a work of this kind to say so much about sails; but I feel that since the popular imagination is so stimulated by a sight of that most beautiful picture, a ship under full sail, that it would hardly be fair to pass the subject over perfunctorily, especially when it is so deeply studied and argued upon board ship. There is nothing in a ship's equipment that excites so much interest among her crew as the sails. Every one on board who has any claim to be called a sailor poses as a critic when a new sail is set, or when another ship heaves in sight, and as many intelligent opinions may then be heard as might be expected from a party of trained workmen going through an exhibition of work with which they were well acquainted.