It may truly be said that the master of a first-class cargo steamer is in much better case than his brother in some small lines of passenger steamers that could be named. He is better paid, better housed, and has far less worry. Some of those small passenger steamers going (for steam vessels) long voyages are run so economically that the master has hard work to keep up any sort of appearance at all. I knew myself of one firm, which shall be nameless, whose advertisements for passengers were most persistent and alluring, who thought it not shameful to pay their masters £12 a month, at the same time insisting that they should invest at least £250 in the company. Cases like these are very disheartening to the striving seaman. For where the master's wages are kept so low, other economies are conducted in proportion. Such a vessel, say of 1500 tons register, would carry at most three mates and eight seamen. The latter would be mostly foreigners, the work for such a small complement being so hard that home-born men worth their salt fight shy of them. And the officers' wages, unfixed as the men's are, would also be cut down deplorably low. Still, even in such a ship as this the master's clerical work is very small. Agents of the company at each port await the vessel's regular arrival, and see to it that she departs on scheduled time, cargo or no cargo. So that the master has no carking care as to how the ship is paying, no responsibility beyond the navigation and management of the ship herself. He has, of course, to consider his passengers, with no buffer between him and their often querulous complaints and constant questionings, such as his exalted brethren in the big liners have in their purser. He is usually a man who has been passed over in the race, and while his ability is of the highest order, he feels naturally shelved upon a very much lower ledge of his profession than he once hoped to reach. In command of these small passenger-carrying ocean-going steamers are to be found some of the very best of our merchant skippers, whose worth and merit are so great that their reward strikes one as most shockingly inadequate.