Always there was a hail and an interchange of names and ports; sometimes both vessels rounded to and boats passed and repassed.

But now the courtesies of the sea have gone with its picturesqueness.

Great ocean liners rushing through the deep, give each other as little heed as railway trains passing on parallel tracks.

A twinkle of electric signals, or a fluttering of parti-colored flags, and each seeks its own horizon--the incident bounded by minutes where once it would have taken hours.
It would not be easy to say whether the sailor's lot has been lightened or not, by the substitution of steel for wood, of steam for sail.

Perhaps the best evidence that the native-born American does not regard the change as wholly a blessing, is to be found in the fact that but few of them now follow the sea, and scarcely a vestige is left of the old New England seafaring population except in the fisheries--where sails are still the rule.