In many respects the cook is the most interesting figure on board ship. From him of the vast floating hotel, where the cook is a man of many attainments, an artist in foods, who should, but does not, command as great a salary as the chef of a first-class London hotel, down to the miserable urchin who crouches low over his scarcely-shielded pot on the open deck of a foreign-going barge, they not only deserve our attention, they demand it, dumbly yet imperiously. How are the cooks of first-class passenger steamers trained? Whence are obtained those able manipulators of provisions who are always to be found on board of excursion steamers that are laid up half the year, as soon as they commence running? What do they do in the dead seasons, these magicians who, in a space no larger than a reasonably-sized cupboard, succeed in turning out a dinner of several courses for five hundred people, no matter what the weather may be? Magician is surely the word, if only for the marvellous way in which every corner of cramped space is utilized, every trick of the culinary art--whereby the same thing is presented under two or three totally different aspects and flavours, and roasting, boiling, frying, and stewing go on apparently in the same glowing chamber at the same moment--is practised. These things amaze me; but, after all, much of the work may be done ashore, or in the quiet of the moorings before starting-time in the morning, and pastry may be bought all ready for table, also cold side-dishes.