IN these little sketches of a few out of the innumerable multitude of ways in which the sea has spoken to me during my long acquaintance with it, I have tried with 'prentice hand to repro duce for shore-dwellers some of the things it has told me. If I were to stop and consider what other men, freeholders upon the upper slopes of the literary Olympus, have done in the same direction, 'i should not dare to put forth this little book. Let my plea be that I have not seen with their eyes nor heard with their ears, but with mine own. This may have some weight with my judges those who will buy the wares I have to sell.