With Jack Ashore--The Seamen's Institute, Sydney

Much has been written by novelists and others of Merchant Jack's life on shipboard, both from the point of view of the preponderating squalor and hardship which still pervades it and from that of the now rare romance that comes in his way. But of his life during the brief spells in port and of the efforts made by kind and generous people to put a little brightness into it, and to bring home to him the fact that there are some folk at least who do not regard him altogether as a pariah and an outcast, very seldom, so quietly is the work carried on, do we hear anything at all. I purpose in this article attempting, so far as concerns our own port of Sydney, to supply the deficiency.
Stowed away in an obscure corner of George-street North, almost facing the wharf where lie the German-Australian steamers, stands the building known as the Seamen's Institute, consisting of a spacious club-room below; and above it, on the next storey, the Mariners' Church—capable, this last, of seating some 600 or 700 people. And, thus, at the Institute are Merchant Jacks' spiritual and physical needs amply provided for by those who know his nature intimately, and allow him, if he so pleases, to smoke his pipe downstairs before going upstairs to worship God; or, if he prefers it, to stay down altogether. The people who manage the Institute know Jack too well to throw Scripture at him; in consequence of which the perverse creature comes out of curiosity to discover for himself what is going on aloft, and as likely as not remains to pray.