Copyright, 1910
By American Tract Society

FOR E WORD

had sunk to silence and the city's gigantic uplift of structures had dwindled to a ragged line in the hush behind us, and our ship had begun to dip her bows with an easy swing as if glad to find herself once more in Ocean's freedom, I strolled below in search of any mail that might have come aboard.

In a long narrow passage

I saw a man, robust and bearded, coming along with a chatting group about him and bearing an armful of letters and papers.

As the party passed me he turned and said with quiet courtesy, “Good morning, sir." There were several hundred persons aboard bound for a cruise through the Mediterranean together, but scarcely a face was known to me. I found myself wondering who this gentleman might be.

I slept most of the time during the next day or two; but at length I got my sea-legs and went down to an evening entertainment. In the center of the crowded dining-saloon, conducting the program, was the man who greeted me in the passage with his arms full of mail. I chanced to drop into a seat beside a little lady who proved to be a genial conversationalist. She

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identified him for me. I now present him to the readers of this book as “the man who greeted me in the

passage with his arms full of mail.” For so I first knew the author, and I know of no fitter characterization.

I came to know Dr. Devins in many other relations while the good ship Arabic bore us to many lands; since returning to America I have learned more of his vigorous, beneficent life. All is summed up in that first glimpse of him. He is ever brotherly and busy. I might tell how many thousands of children go each summer from the tenements of New York into the health and gladness which childhood finds in the country because this Editor of The New York Observer has a big brother's interest in their little lives, and busies himself managing the affairs of The Tribune Fresh Air Fund. But this would only be one of the many practical activities which engage the hand that wrote these

pages.

He is no recluse, no easy-going bookmaker, no unconcerned traveler roaming the world for pleasure only. He has traveled the world over, knows public men and rulers, has studied the life of peoples speaking many tongues, always as a lover of his kind.

One may venture to say that it is this attitude of mind which is likely to receive through the medium of intelligent observation the truest impressions of the classic Mediterranean. The detached mind which views the marvels of bygone life on those shores with no deep sense of human brotherhood and no enthu