Captain Anderson's narrative is so ingenuous as to be disarming.
Even while we felt that the author bad no power of giving literary effectiveness to his reminiscences we were saying to ourselves "What a nice man he must be ! " It is not often one comes across an old sailor who thinks that the romance of the sea is all that it is said to be. Here, however, is a genuine case. Captain Anderson, who was born at Durban, insisted upon going to sea when he was a boy in spite of the solemn warnings of his father (who was himself a sailor) and he has never changed his mind about the sailor's life being the most interesting and varied in the world. Even Charles Dibdin did not write with greater enthusiasm, but then Dibdin was not a sailor. There surely could be no better proof of the author's love of the sea than the fact that he was offered an opening in a diamond company in South Africa when the diamonds were discovered. Ile refused it. The sea dazzled him more than the gems. We are pleased to see that he gives a chit to the skippers of the old penny steamers on the Thames. He considers that they were handled in a "smart and seamanlike manner."
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