We owe everything to the ships. All our food comes from afar. Yes, all of it, including food for thought. The school, the college, the university; they all resemble the virtuous housewife spreading her table. They bring food from afar. Only this afternoon I was shown over Dennington College. The Principal, Miss Gertrude Milman, B.A., took me into a class-room in which a geography lesson was in progress. The teacher was giving her pupils food from afar. Hardy adventurers and patient explorers sailed across unknown seas, charted unknown lands, and returned with the priceless results of their hazardous investigations. And those results, brought home by the ships, were being dispensed in the class-room at Dennington College. Miss Milman herself teaches philosophy. But she owes it all to the ships. Far away over the sea, Plato and Aristotle and Socrates wrestled with the problems of the universe in the old days; and far away over the sea Kant and Hegel and Bergson pondered those same problems in a later time; and the ships have brought us the wealthy fruitage of their profound cogitations. 'And here,' Miss Milman told me, 'the girls assemble in the morning for the scripture lesson.' I do not know exactly how that half-hour is spent; but I am certain that, even then, Miss Milman sets before her pupils food from afar. The Bible itself has come to us across the ocean. The world is only rolling into light because the ships, with their white sails, have dotted every sea. 'The prayers you offer,' says J. M. Neale, 'the prayers you offer, the hymns you sing, the books of devotion you use, how far, far hence in time, how far, far hence in distance, do their sources lie? Perhaps from some quaint mediÆval German house, with its surrounding fields and lanes and gardens buried deep in snow, you get a prayer which we use at Christmastide. Perhaps from the dog days of an Andalusian Convent, with its orange trees and its pomegranates and its fountains, you get such music as that lovely introit, "Like as the hart desireth after the waterbrooks." Perhaps from the tomb of a martyr you get such a hymn as "O God, Thy soldiers' crown and guard." Prayers, music, hymns; they are all the same. They come from afar, from afar. I left Dennington College feeling that, after all, Miss Milman is very much like Solomon's housewife; she is entirely dependent on the ships; she bringeth her food from afar.