To be in a shipping-office is not perhaps to be the rose, but it is to live near it,--the great rose of the sea.

You are, so to say, a land-sailor, a supercargo left on shore.

Your office-windows are lashed with hurricanes; your talk is frequently of cyclones.

The names of far romantic isles are constantly on your lips, and your bills of lading are threepenny romances in themselves.

Strange produce of distant lands are your daily concern, and the four winds meet at your counter with a savour of tar.