Our mate, however, having served his allotted time, and received the essential recommendation from his last commander, makes his way to a navigation school, not that he, unless he be a hopeless idiot, has waited until now to be taught navigation, but in order that his knowledge may be suitably arranged for production at the right time and in the accepted fashion. Some young would-be officers are foolish enough to imagine that the master of a navigation school can also help them in their seamanship, but with lamentable results. For the navigation is in cut-and-dried exercises which any ordinarily capable scholar may learn with little difficulty, since all of them may be satisfactorily done without the slightest knowledge of the higher mathematics. There are thousands of Mercantile Marine officers holding certificates, good men too, who could not work a problem in trigonometry without the tables to save their lives, and to whom Euclid is a sealed book; for clever men have long been at work simplifying navigation problems, until their execution is just a matter of simple arithmetic and acquaintance with a set of nautical tables. This state of things gives rise to much controversy among those who are interested in Mercantile Marine officers. Some say that every officer should make a point of knowing not merely how to work his problems, but why certain tables are used; in other words, that he should not merely work by rule of thumb, but be a competent mathematician. Then, these gentlemen add, he would be able to command not only higher wages, but more consideration from his employers, besides being better able to compete with the carefully-educated foreigner. Others contend that the business already laid upon Merchant officers is fully as great as they ought to bear, and that, supposing they had learned the mathematical theory of navigation, they would still in practice use the rule of thumb method. Not feeling at all capable of deciding between these two contestants, I merely present their views, contenting myself with the passing remark that, supposing a man to be a good seaman, it cannot be to his detriment to make himself as proficient in the mathematical theory of navigation as his capacity will enable him. But with regard to seamanship, matters are totally different. Here there can be no difference of opinion. Seamanship, that is the handling of a ship under all circumstances of weather, the fitting and keeping in repair of her masts, rigging, sails, etc., and the stowage of her cargo, cannot be learned from books. The unhappy neophyte who has scrambled through his apprenticeship without attempting to learn the business, and comes at the last moment to his crammer for assistance, is in evil case when standing before the keen-eyed old shipmaster who is to examine him. He tries to recall book answers to questions that are not in the books.