immense lot of practical knowledge professionally--more than I
could get on a ship at sea--I think he would give me two years'
leave on half or quarter pay. Or, I would be willing to do without
pay--only to be kept on the register in my rank.

"I will write more about this. Love to all."


It is characteristic of McGiffin that in the very same letter in which
he announces he has entered foreign service he plans to return to
that of his own country. This hope never left him. You find the
same homesickness for the quarterdeck of an American
man-of-war all through his later letters. At one time a bill to
reinstate the midshipmen who had been cheated of their
commissions was introduced into Congress. Of this McGiffin
writes frequently as "our bill." "It may pass," he writes, "but I am
tired hoping. I have hoped so long. And if it should," he adds
anxiously, "there may be a time limit set in which a man must
rejoin, or lose his chance, so do not fail to let me know as quickly
as you can." But the bill did not pass, and McGiffin never returned
to the navy that had cut him adrift. He settled down at Tien-Tsin
and taught the young cadets how to shoot. Almost all of those who
in the Chinese-Japanese War served as officers were his pupils. As
the navy grew, he grew with it, and his position increased in
importance. More Mexican dollars per month, more servants,
larger houses, and buttons of various honorable colors were given
him, and, in return, he established for China a modem naval
college patterned after our own. In those days throughout China
and Japan you could find many of these foreign advisers. Now, in
Japan, the Hon. W. H. Dennison of the Foreign Office, one of our