service older than anything Whitehall knows, though still as lively as
enterprise itself, and as recent as the ships which moved on today's
high water.

In a frame outside one of its shops hangs a photograph of a sailing
ship. The portrait is so large and the beauty of the subject so
evident that it might have been the cause of the stranger stopping
there to fill his pipe. Yet how could he know that to those groups of
men loitering about the name of that ship is as familiar as Suez or
Rio, even though they have never seen her? They know her as well as
they know their business. They know her house-flag--it is
indistinguishable in the picture--and her master, and it is possible
the oldest of them remembers the clippers of that fleet of which she
alone now carries the emblem; for this is not only another year, but
another era. But they do not look at her portrait. They spit into the
road, or stare across it, and rarely move from where they stand, except
to pace up and down as though keeping a watch. At one time, perhaps
thirty years ago, it was usual to see gold rings in their ears. It is
said that if you wanted a bunch of men to run a little river steamer,
with a freeboard of six inches, out to Delagoa Bay, you could engage
them all at this corner, or at the taverns just up the turning. The
suggestion of such a voyage, in such a ship, would turn us to look on
these men in wonder, for it is the way of all but the wise to expect
appearance to betray admirable qualities. These fellows, though, are
not significant, except that you might think of some of them that their
ease and indifference were assumed, and that, when trying not to look
so, they were very conscious of the haste and importance of this great
city into which that corner jutted far enough for them. They have just
landed, or they are about to sail again, and they might be standing on
the shore eyeing the town beyond, in which the luck of ships is cast by