to sea. They stand a better chance than ever before, because so many men are making these shifts of jobs as a result of the late war that it is taken for granted more than it used to be, and a man doesn't feel so odd about it as he would have once on a time, and ships' officers expect to teach a man that old in a way they wouldn't have expected to before the war. Besides, a man that age does less skylarking, naturally, than a kid, and learns faster because he sets himself to it harder. He is at some disadvantage. There is a liveliness and a certainty in rigging, a quickness and handiness at the wheel, a nimbleness with the marlinspike and all kinds of knotting and splicing, a grip at the oar, that a man does always best who has learned it young. But, take it by and large, the saving thought for any man who thinks he's a little old to start in on a new job is that, as things run, if you know the rudiments of a job and do them well nobody knows, who hasn't been with you when you started in, whether you've been at the thing six months or six years. If you're handy at a thing, you pick up the necessary things to do in the course of three months or six. After that most men are content to hold their own, adding a little to their capabilities from time

to time. A man who throws himself into the thing and throws his whole weight on the oar instead of letting up can make large allusions to his long sea experiences at the end of a year when he newly joins some ship where nobody knows him, if he has imagination and wants to and his conscience will let him, and if he isn't too much of a braggart nobody will know or care whether he started his sea life at sixteen or twenty-eight, provided, of course, he has shed the mannerisms unfitted to the sea that may have characterized his earlier jobs. It's the first six months that are always the hardest.

So the kid of sixteen, the young man of twenty-three, the grown man of thirty, has to ask himself what there is in sea life for him, what there is in him for sea life, what he might have instead on shore, whether he is foot-free or must think of others as well as himself, and how his plans will fit into their lives, and whether he is going just for a look 'round or to start a career.

If a man for any reason, because he is young or because he is foot-free for a time, is going to sea just as a fling, he has both the navy and the merchant marine to choose from. Conditions of life are apt to be easier for him in the navy, and he will see more of

pomp and circumstance. He is held to a full term of enlistment, of course, and there are more deferences to be paid to officers and petty officers on shipboard and more restrictions upon his daily liberty than in the merchant marine. But he receives a great many benefits and considerations for which a civilian seaman has to pay out of his earnings or cannot have at all. He doesn't have to work so hard or under so many disagreeable conditions. He is almost sure to go on some interesting cruises, although he may get stuck in some hole for longer than he likes. He gets a good deal of nautical and gunnery training, too, but it is navalized training and will not equip him as well for a further life in the merchant marine as the same time spent in merchant-ships. The civilian seaman can select his routes of travel more to his own immediate liking and is growing up in the conditions and aptitudes of the life that is before him. But if it is only a case of a look around and training in some jobs that may be useful in shore life, a man ought not to overlook what the navy offers in deciding how to go to sea.

The life in merchant-ships is not a life of great big rewards and it is not a life of unlimited openings. There has been too much

loose talk as though both of these things are otherwise, and it is well to be plain about it. If a man has better than good average abilities it is hardly an open question but that he can forge ahead faster and in the end have more money and a better station socially by remaining ashore. Moreover, the United States merchant marine will have to fight for any growth it gets, and there will neither be as abundant ships nor as good pay nor as much attention to a seaman's comfort on ships as there has been the past three or four years, although, on the other hand, both opportunities and pay and quarters will be better than they ever have been before in the United States merchant marine or any other merchant marine. There are hundreds of captains at two hundred dollars a month where there are a dozen at five thousand dollars a year. The blue-ribbon jobs are exceedingly few and far between. Blueribbon jobs are the jobs as captain and chief engineer of crack transatlantic or transpacific liners and shore jobs like marine superintendent or supervising engineer. They are worked up to by years of hard, capable, resourceful life at sea and a balance of luck playing in a man's favor instead of against him. They are to be had, and there will be

more of them in the United States merchant service, both afloat and in the shore offices of the lines, but they are relatively scarce and they are the prizes for the exceptional men. If you believe you are an exceptional man or can become one at sea, there's your meat. But most men going to sea have got to ask themselves what the routine life will give them in the way of promotion in return for faithful and capable work. The captain of the average freighter or coastwise passengerboat is paid a salary of two thousand or twenty-five hundred dollars a year. The chief engineer is paid a couple of hundreds less. The chief officer and the first assistant engineer, although they are charged with all the active administration of their two respective departments in the ship, are paid much less than the captain. In the case of liners it is sometimes a difference between five thousand and two thousand. In the case of less important craft it is a difference between two thousand and fifteen hundred. Of course there are legitimate perquisites for a man, and if he saves through the years as he works and accumulates a little surplus he can put it into one venture and another that he spots as he sails in and out of various ports. But the trading ventures on the side