THERE are few phrases in the English language more familiar than "Off Sandy Hook." It is a standing head-line in most English newspapers; and the fact recorded in the Court Circular that "the Queen walked out yesterday" is not a more frequently reiterated piece of information than that yesterday such-andsuch great steamers were "off Sandy Hook." Like many other familiar phrases, it conveys to the mind no definite idea of the thing itself. It is only in the mighty leisure of a voyage across the Atlantic that one has time to formulate the question, What is Sandy Hook?

Why Rookery?" as Miss Betsy Trotwood sharply asked David Copperfield when he

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mentioned the postal address of the step-paternal home. Is Sandy Hook a curved instrument with which a great and friendly nation seizes incoming ships and gives them a pull on to New York after ascertaining the precise quality of the assisted emigrants on board? Is it a hook at all, and is it in any obtrusive way sandy?

The questions must remain unsolved as far as this record is concerned, for when we passed Sandy Hook it was midnight, and only two beacons indicated the world-famed spot. It was a magnificent night, with the moonlight shining over a smooth and glassy sea. About half-past eleven, when most of the passengers had retired to their state-rooms, the stillness was broken by strains of music coming nearer and nearer. Presently a tug bore down upon us, and an excited crowd began to call on "Brown!" We had on board an inoffensive gentleman of that name travelling with his wife and young daughter. I now learned, with the feeling of regret that fills the mind when one finds too late he has been entertaining angels unawares, that Mr. Brown was the State printer of New York, and that this was the Democratic party who had worked ungrudgingly to obtain for him the office, and now welcomed his return from European

travel. They had come to bear Mr. Brown off, an undertaking not without difficulty, seeing that we had not yet passed quarantine.

But the Democratic party of New York when it puts its hand to the plough makes its furrow straight and deep. It had obtained a special permit from the ordinarily inflexible city authorities to allow Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown, and Miss Brown, forthwith to land in case there were no sickness on board the Britannic. They engaged a doctor at a special fee to visit the ship and give the necessary certificate; and so with the band playing "Home, Sweet Home," the Democratic party madly cheering, and violently shaking hands with the rescued passengers, the tug faded out of sight over the moonlit sea, and we were bereft of Brown.

Fancy Mr. Hansard, who prints our Parliamentary Reports, or one of the firm of Spottiswoode, the Queen's printers, coming home from a trip to Antwerp or Australia, and either the Liberal party or the Conservative party running down to Gravesend with a string band to bear him home in triumph! I am afraid there is no doubt that, by comparison, we as a nation are lethargic in politics.

We were over a thousand souls on board the Britannic, a fearful charge for the under

taking of any one man. For the first few days it weighed heavily on the spirits of our captain, and left him no time for those frivolities by which some captains of big passenger ships round off the sharp edge of official duty. No little tea-parties in the captain's room, no attentions to the fair, no chatting with the brave, and no assumption at the table of the cheery attitude of host. Till we were in midAtlantic the captain's place at the head of the table was, in truth, rarely filled, except in the sense that Banquo sometimes sat at the banquetting board. Occasionally the passengers at dinner became aware of the presence of a tall figure carefully wrapped up, standing by the doorway surveying the festive scene. Sometimes It sat in the chair at the head of the captain's table, gloomily ate a dish, and disappeared. At others It shook its head, and stalked forth, wondering how two hundred men and women could eat and drink when the wind was south-east by east-half-east, and at any moment something might happen at the lee scuppers.

This is our captain as he appears "when the stormy winds do blow" and we are near land, in the track of ships and of danger. But when fine weather comes he thaws out, and though always preserving the self-re