The following letter by Mr. Grant Oliver to "The Times" will be read with interest by old China hands and by all who go down the sea in ships:—There are many ways of spending] Boxing Day, but being in the izhbourhood of Falmouth 1 was maken long-desired pilgrimage to the Cutty Sara, fectest and most perfect of tea papers, built in 1869, Tt was blow. ing and raining, but by good luck found a waterman ready to tuke me off to her, where she lay: moored out in the ' stream, the last of her race. On board 1 was comed by the oticer in charge, who: faad sailed in her when she was the Trade, and I was particularly pleased to find that she is retained ret only for sentiment, but used as training school for lads about} to enter the Navy or Merchant]
As I was taken along her yacht-Wke deck I could not help thinking: there was something symbolical in the old custom of the crew being Barefooted on such ships, and I felt IT was being rough, discourteous, clownish—as if one were to embrace 2 woman's shoulders with gloves on: stupid as well rude. But she knew, for if ever a ship had a personality, the Cutty} Surk had. And after all who was Last year one of her old masters, one who had sailed her for 19 successive years, came down Ztom Norfolk to visit her after 28 years' separation, and I was told they had a job to get him to Teave her quarter-deck. I would like to have sat alone for a whi in her cosy panelled cuddy, pieturing the scones and men who had] sat there as she tore through the Trades at 17 knots, scorning to take any sail off such a perfect sailer—Sydney to London in 73] days, round the Cape. And waz rot this on: of the ships which Conrad knew, and from an incident:
"The Nigger of Then to think of Patient suffering exile, the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.