Sir: Some people do not do generous things by halves, even in the old “effete” monarchies. I returned from England (where I had been spending a sort of business holiday) in November, in the Cunard steamer Batavia, Capt. John E. Mouland. In mid-ocean we encountered a fearful gale—a gale that is known to have destroyed a great many vessels, & is supposed to have made away with a great many more that have never been heard of to this day. The storm lasted two days with us; then subsided for a few brief hours; then burst forth again; & while this last effort was in full swing we came upon a dismasted vessel, the bark Charles Ward. She was nothing but a bursted & spouting hulk, surmounted with a chaos of broken spars & bits of fluttering rags—a sort of ruined flower-pot hung with last year’s spider-webs, so to speak. The vast seas swept over her, burying her from sight, & then she would rise again & spew volumes of water through cracks in her sides & bows, & discharge white floods through the gateway that was left where her stern had been. Her captain & eight men were lashed in the remains of the main rigging. They were pretty well famished & frozen, for they had been there two nights & a part of two days of stormy wintry weather. Capt. Mouland brought up broadside to wind & sea, & called for volunteers to man the life-boat. D. Gillies, Third Officer; H. Kyle, Fourth Officer, & six seamen answered instantly.1explanatory note It was worth any money to see that life-boat climb those dizzy mountains of water, in a driving mist of spume-flakes, & fight its way inch by inch in the teeth of the gale. Just the mere memory of it stirs a body so, that I would swing my hat & disgorge a cheer now, if I could do it without waking the baby. But if you get a baby awake once you can never get it asleep again, & then you get into trouble with the whole family. Somehow I don’t seem to have a chance to yell, now, the way I used to. Well, in just one hour’s time that life-boat crew had rescued those shipwrecked men; & during 30 minutes of the time, their own lives were not worth purchase at a sixpence, their peril was so great.

The passengers showed their appreciation of this thing as far as they were able, & we were so proud of our captain & our life-boat crew that we ventured to join in a communication to the Royal Humane Society of London, detailing the circumstances & petitioning that they would take notice of our sailors’ gallant achievement.2explanatory note I have just heard the result, & would like to communicate it to the passengers, & to all who take an interest in things nobler than the usual daily feast of Congress corruption & judicial rottenness.3explanatory note

The Humane Society promptly conferred the gold medal & a vote of thanks upon Capt. Mouland; they also gave silver medals to Officers Gillies & Kyle, & a money reward suited to their official grade, & thanked them; & they likewise thanked the six seamen & gave £7 gold ($35), to each of them—say somewhere about two months’ wages. We are a nation of forty millions, & we have some little money. Cannot we have a society like that? Why, it is the next most noblest thing to sending moral tracts to Timbuctoo. And would cost less money, too. Not that I object to sending moral tracts to Timbuctoo; far from it; I write the most of them myself, & gain the larger part of my living in that way. I would grieve to see Timbuctoo redeemed, & have to lose its custom. But why not start a Humane Society besides? We have got one man worthy to conduct it, & that is Mr. Bergh. If God did not make Bergh, He certainly did not make the insects that try to thwart his purposes—& do not succeed. 4explanatory note

We are the offspring of England; & so it is pleasant to reflect that the very first thing that astonishes a stranger when he arrives in that country is not its physical features, not the vastness of London, not the peculiarities of speech & dress of its people, but the curious lavishness with which that people pour money into the lap of any high & worthy object needing help. It is not done ostentatiously, but modestly. It comes from nobody knows where, about half the time, but it comes. Every few days you see a brief item like this in the papers: “The (such & such a charity) desire to acknowledge the receipt of £1,000 from X. Y. Z. This is the fifth £1,000 from the same source.” X. Y. Z. don’t give his name; he just gives his $25,000, & says no more about it. Some hospital will put up a contribution box by the door, & it will capture hundreds upon hundreds of pounds from unknown passers-by. The porter of the Charing-Cross hospital saw a gentleman stuff something into the contribution-box & pass on. He opened the box to see what it was; it was a roll of bank bills, amounting to $1,250. One day an unknown lady entered Middlesex Hospital & asked leave to go round & talk with the patients; it was found, after she was gone, that she had been distributing half sovereigns among them; she had squandered $750 there. But why go on? I got so worked up about charity matters in London that I was near coming away from there ignorant of everything else. I could reel off instances of prodigal charity conferred by stealth in that city till even The Tribune’s broad columns would cry for quarter. “Ginx’s Baby” could not satirize the national disposition toward free-handed benevolence—it could only satirize instances of foolish & stupid methods in the application of the funds by some of the charitable organizations.5explanatory note But in most cases the great benevolent societies of England manage their affairs admirably.

It makes one dizzy to read the long list of enormous sums that individuals have given to the London hospitals. People die of want & starvation in that huge hive, just as they do in New-York, merely because nine people in ten who beg help are imposters—the worthy & the sensitive shrink from making their condition known, & perish without making an appeal. In either city a thousand hands would be stretched forth to save such if the need could be known in time. I have forgotten many things I saw in London, but I remember yet what an outburst there was, & what a pang seemed to dart through the whole great heart of England when a poor, obscure, & penniless American girl threw herself from Waterloo bridge because she was hungry & homeless & had no friend to turn to.6explanatory note Everybody talked; everybody said “Shame, shame!” all the newspapers were troubled; one heard strong, honest regrets on every hand, & such expressions as, “What a pity, poor thing; she could have been smothered in money if a body could only have known of her case.” You would have supposed an Emperor had fallen, & not a mere nameless waif from a far country. This mourning for the late Napoleon is lifeless & empty compared to it.7explanatory note That girl could have collected a whole fortune in London if she could have come alive again.

We know what the Royal Humane Society is; for it is always at work, & its fame is wide in the earth. Well, England is sown generously with just such institutions—not Government pets, but supported entirely by voluntary contributions of the people. And they make no pow-wow; one does not even see the names of their officers in print. Now there is the Royal National Life-Boat Institution, for instance. During the year 1869 it saved 28 vessels; its boats saved 1,072 human lives; it paid, in cash rewards for saving life, $12,000 gold. It keeps its own boats & boat stations; has its men on guard night & day, under regular salaries, & pays them an extra reward for every life saved. Since it first began its work it has saved a fraction under 19,000 lives; it has conferred 90 gold medals & 807 silver ones; it has given away $158,000 in cash rewards for saving life, & has expended $1,183,330 on its life-boat stations & life-saving apparatus. And all that money was obtained by voluntary subscriptions. 8explanatory note

To return to the life-boat crew of the “Batavia.” The Cunard Steamship Company gave each of the six seamen £5 apiece, & promoted third officer Gillies & fourth officer Kyle to the rank & pay of first officers; the said rank & pay to commence, not upon the day we found the dismasted vessel, but upon the day our ship left Liverpool for America. Now how is that for “the clean white thing,” as they say in the mountains?9explanatory note I have italicized the word “first,” for I ask you to understand that that is a perfectly dazzling promotion to achieve with just sixty minutes’ work—it would have taken those men ten or twelve years of slow hard work in the Company’s service to accomplish that, as matters usually go in that methodical old private navy. Indeed those practical, hard-headed, unromantic Cunard people would not take Noah himself as first mate till they had worked him up through all the lower grades & tried him ten years or such a matter. They make every officer serve an apprenticeship under their eyes in their own ships before they advance him or trust him. Capt. Mouland had been at sea 16 years, & was in command of a big 1,600-tun ship when they took him into their service; but they only made him fourth officer, & he had to work up tediously to earn his captaincy. He has been with them 18 years now. Officers Gillies & Kyle have suddenly jumped over a whole regiment of officers’ heads & landed within one step of the captaincy, & all in good time they will be promoted that step, too. They hold the rank & receive the pay of first officers now, & will continue to do so, though there are no vacancies at present. But they will fill the first vacancies that occur.

It is a curious, self-possessed, old-fashioned Company, the Cunard. (Scotchmen they are.) It was born before the days of steamships; it inaugurated ocean steamer lines; it never has lost more than one vessel; it has never lost a passenger’s life at all; its ships are never insured; great mercantile firms do not insure their goods sent over in Cunard ships; it is rather safer to be in their vessels than on shore. Old-fashioned is the word. When a thing is established by the Cunarders, it is there for good & all, almost. Before adopting a new thing the chiefs cogitate & cogitate & cogitate; then they lay it before their head purveyor, their head merchant, their head builder, their head engineer, & all the captains in the service, & they go off & cogitate about a year; then if the new wrinkle is approved it is adopted, & put into the regulations. In the old days, near 40 years ago, when this was an ocean line of sailing vessels, corpses were not permitted by the company to take passage, or go as freight, either—sailor superstition, you know. Very well; to this day they won’t carry corpses. Forty years ago they always had stewed prunes & rice for dinner on “duff” days; well, to this present time, whenever duff day comes around, you will always have your regular stewed prunes & rice in a Cunarder. If you do n’t get anything else, you can always depend on that—& depend on it with your money up, too, if you are that sort of a person.

It takes them about 10 or 15 years to manufacture a captain; but when they have got him manufactured to suit at last, they have full confidence in him. The only order they give a captain is this, brief & to the point: “Your ship is loaded, take her; speed is nothing; follow your own road, deliver her safe, bring her back safe—safety is all that is required.”

The noted Cunard Company is composed simply of two or three grandchildren who have stepped into the shoes of two or three children who stepped into the shoes of a couple of old Scotch fathers; for Burns & MacIver were the Cunard Company when it was born; it was Burns & MacIver when the originators had passed away; it is Burns & MacIver still in the third generation—never has been out of the two families. Burns was a Glasgow merchant, MacIver was an old sea-dog who sailed a ship for him in early times. That vessel’s earnings were cast into a sinking fund; with the money they built another ship, & then another, & thus the old original packet line from Glasgow to Halifax was established. At that time the mails were slowly & expensively carried in English Government vessels. Burns & MacIver & Judge Haliburton (“Sam Slick”) fell to considering a scheme of getting the job of carrying these mails in private bottoms. In order to manage the thing they needed to be quiet about it, & also they needed faster vessels. Haliburton had a relative who was not a shining success in practical life, but had an inventive head; name, Sam Cunard; he took his old jack-knife & a shingle & sat down & whittled out this enormous Royal Mail Line of vessels that we call the Cunarders—a great navy, it is—doing business in every ocean; owning forty-five steamships of vast cost; conducting its affairs with the rigid method & system of a national navy; promoting by merit, priority in routine, & for conspicuous service; using a company uniform; retiring superannuated & disabled men & officers on permanent pensions, & numbering its servants by hundreds & thousands. In its own private establishment in Liverpool it keeps 4,000 men under pay. That is what Sam. Cunard whittled out. That is to say, he whittled out a little model for a fast vessel; it was satisfactory; he was instructed to go & get the mail contract, simply under his own name; he did it, & the company became commonly known as the Cunard Company; then the Company tried steam & made it work; they prospered, & bought out Haliburton, & also Cunard’s little interest; they removed Cunard to England & made him their London agent; he grew very rich & unspeakably respectable, & when he died he died not as a poor, dreaming provincial whittler of experimental models, but as the great Sir Samuel Cunard, K. C. B., or G. W. X., or something like that, for the sovereign had knighted him.10explanatory note

Well, the Cunard Company is a great institution, & has got more money than you & I both put together; & yet none of the family ever write editorials or deliver lectures. The Company have built school-houses & they educate the children of their employés; they are going to build dwellings for their shore men that shall be cheap & clean & comfortable; when one of their men dies, a subscription list goes about in his ship or in whatever arm of the service his name is booked, & whatever sum is raised the Cunard Company add just a similar sum, & it all goes to the man’s heirs. Their system of pensions—

But I have never been offered a cent for all this; I am not even acquainted with a member of the Cunard Company. I think I will wait awhile before I go on—it cramps my hand to write so much on a stretch. But it is all right, any way. So many thousands of Americans have traveled in those steamers that they will like to read about that Company.

Capt. Mouland has got the gold medal; but if I were to try to tell you how much fire & blood & peril a sailor will gladly go through to get that darling prize, I would have to write all night. I believe a captain would rather have that Royal Humane Society’s gold medal for saving life at sea than be made a commodore & have a fleet of vessels under him.

The Cunard steamers always carry some casks of water & provisions where they can be hoisted out at a moment’s warning for the relief of distressed vessels at sea, & they—

But, really, I can’t advertise these parties for nothing. It is n’t “business.”11explanatory note