“And some are drowned in deep water,
      And some in sight of shore;
   And word goes back to the weary wife,
      And ever she sends more.”

But the Sea Wife’s child-bearing is about done.  The stock is running out, and the planet is filling up.  The wives of her sons may carry on the breed, but her work is past.  The erstwhile men of England are now the men of Australia, of Africa, of America.  England has sent forth “the best she breeds” for so long, and has destroyed those that remained so fiercely, that little remains for her to do but to sit down through the long nights and gaze at royalty on the wall.

The true British merchant seaman has passed away.  The merchant service is no longer a recruiting ground for such sea dogs as fought with Nelson at Trafalgar and the Nile.  Foreigners largely man the merchant ships, though Englishmen still continue to officer them and to prefer foreigners for’ard.  In South Africa the colonial teaches the islander how to shoot, and the officers muddle and blunder; while at home the street people play hysterically at mafficking, and the War Office lowers the stature for enlistment.

It could not be otherwise.  The most complacent Britisher cannot hope to draw off the life-blood, and underfeed, and keep it up forever.  The average Mrs. Thomas Mugridge has been driven into the city, and she is not breeding very much of anything save an anaemic and sickly progeny which cannot find enough to eat.  The strength of the English-speaking race to-day is not in the tight little island, but in the New World overseas, where are the sons and daughters of Mrs. Thomas Mugridge.  The Sea Wife by the Northern Gate has just about done her work in the world, though she does not realize it.  She must sit down and rest her tired loins for a space; and if the casual ward and the workhouse do not await her, it is because of the sons and daughters she has reared up against the day of her feebleness and decay.

CHAPTER XVI—­PROPERTY VERSUS PERSON

In a civilisation frankly materialistic and based upon property, not soul, it is inevitable that property shall be exalted over soul, that crimes against property shall be considered far more serious than crimes against the person.  To pound one’s wife to a jelly and break a few of her ribs is a trivial offence compared with sleeping out under the naked stars because one has not the price of a doss.  The lad who steals a few pears from a wealthy railway corporation is a greater menace to society than the young brute who commits an unprovoked assault upon an old man over seventy years of age.  While the young girl who takes a lodging under the pretence that she has work commits so dangerous an offence, that, were she not severely punished, she and her kind might bring the whole fabric of property clattering to the ground.  Had she unholily tramped Piccadilly and the Strand after midnight, the police would not have interfered with her, and she would have been able to pay for her lodging.