The Sun correspondent knows, for he has eaten with these men. Many a time has he seen members of the wardroom mess send out for some of the food the sailormen were eating at that moment, the officers preferring it to the food of their own mess. Every man on a warship has his pound and three-quarters of meat a day. He must be provided with it, the regulations, say, no matter what the cost. He must have a certain allowance of this and that, and a general steward sees that it is made up into attractive dishes.

The sailorman no longer eats his meals sitting on a deck with the food spread out before him on a piece of canvas. He has tables and benches and plated knives and forks. His dishes are washed by machinery, his tables scrubbed until they are as clean as any housewife could make them. And when he is through his meal all are triced up out of the way, in what a landsman would call the rafters, practically out of sight.

Gone are the days of scouse, lob scouse, skillagalee, burgoo, lob dominion. Gone are the days when the men divided themselves up into societies for the destruction of salt beef and pork. Slush, as the duff made from large quantities of beef fat was called, is one of the absent morsels of food. You don't hear anything more of dunderfunk. What was dunderfunk? Well, it has been defined by sea sharks in this way: "As cruel nice a dish as man ever put into him." It was made of hardtack hashed and pounded, mixed with beef fat, molasses and water, and it was baked in a pan. No, the men nowadays have cottage pudding, tapioca pudding, ice cream, if you please. Their meats are of the finest. Every article of food is the best that can be bought. It's plain food, true, but no food was ever better than the best of plain food. Here is a menu of one week picked at random from the collection:

SUNDAY.
Breakfast.
Baked Pork and Beans.
Tomato Catsup.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Dinner.
Roast Pork.
Apple Sauce.
Brown Gravy.
Potatoes.
String Beans.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Supper.
Cold Corned Beef.
Tinned Fruit.
Cake.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
MONDAY.
Breakfast.
Corn Meal Mush.
Milk.
Fried Pork Sausage.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Dinner.
Vegetable Soup.
Roast Beef.
Gravy and Potatoes.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Supper.
Beef Pot Pie.
Jelly.
Bread and Butter.
Tea.
TUESDAY.
Breakfast.
Ham Hash.
Tomato Catsup.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Dinner.
Fricassee of Veal.
Green Peas.
Potatoes.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Supper.
Frankfurters.
Hot Slaw.
Bread and Butter.
Tea.
WEDNESDAY.
Breakfast.
Baked Pork and Beans.
Tomato Catsup.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Dinner.
Tomato Soup.
Boiled Ham.
Potatoes.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.

Supper.
Hamburg Steak.
Onion Gravy.
Potatoes.
Bread and Butter.
Tea.
THURSDAY.
Breakfast.
Fried Pork Chops.
Onion Gravy.
Potatoes.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Dinner.
Roast Beef.
Brown Gravy.
Potatoes.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Supper.
Cold Corned Beef.
Fried Potatoes.
Bread and Butter.
Tea.
FRIDAY.
Breakfast.
Oatmeal and Milk.
Fried Bacon.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Dinner.
Pot Roast Beef.
Brown Gravy.
Macaroni and Tomatoes.
Potatoes.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Supper.
Tinned Salmon.
Potato Salad.
Bread and Butter.
Tea.
SATURDAY.
Breakfast.
Beef Stew.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Dinner.
Bean Soup.
Boiled Pork.
Pickles.
Potatoes.
Bread and Butter.
Coffee.
Supper.
Bologna Sausage.
Rice Pudding.
Jelly.
Bread and Butter.
Tea.

The menus of every ship have to be forwarded to the flagship every week so that the Admiral may observe whether the men have had the proper kind of food. No, Jack no longer kicks seriously about his food on a warship. No workingman in the world gets better.

Take the libraries nowadays. There are two of them on every ship, the ship's library and the crew's library. The officers use the ship's library. It is scattered about the officers' quarters in various cases, some in the wardroom, some in the Captain's or Admiral's quarters, some in the steerage. There are about thirty classifications, dealing with technical subjects, with history, travel, adventure, poetry, a limited amount of fiction and so on. The crew's library is three times larger. There is a great deal of history and travel and adventure and some science in it, but the larger part is made up of as good fiction as the English language provides. The classic authors are represented, but a large amount of the newer fiction is also represented. You find Kipling, Anthony Hope, E. W. Hornung, W. W. Jacobs, Jack London, Weir Mitchell, Booth Tarkington, S. J. Weyman, along with Bret Harte, Mark Twain, R. L. Stevenson, Scott, Thackeray, Charles Reade, Washington Irving, Bulwer-Lytton and so on.

And the men read these books! Far into the night you will come across some youngsters whose hammock is near a light and who cannot sleep straining his eyes in reading some book. At any time when the smoking lamp is lit and the men have knocked off work if you walk through the ship you will probably find 150 men reading books. Their association with the best fiction and best history is constant. They discuss these books and they get a fund of information that no other grade of men in a factory receive.

And how was it in the old days? Melville tells about it in his "White Jacket," the book that relates to the old frigate United States in 1843. He says:

"There was a public library on board paid for by Government and entrusted to the custody of one of the marine corporals, a little, dried up man of a somewhat literary turn. He had once been a clerk in a post office ashore, and having been long accustomed to hand over letters when called for he was now just the man to hand over books. He kept them in a large cask on the berth deck, and when seeking a particular volume had to capsize it like a barrel of potatoes. This made him very cross and irritable, as most all librarians are. Who had the selection of these books I do not know, but some of them must have been selected by our chaplain, who so pranced on Coleridge's 'High German Horse.'"

"Mason Good's 'Book of Nature,' a very good book, to be sure, but not precisely adapted to literary tastes, was one of these volumes; and Macchiavelli's 'Art of War,' which was very dry fighting; and a folio of Tillotson's sermons, the best of reading for divines indeed, but with little relish for a main top man; and Locke's Essays, incomparable essays, everybody knows, but miserable reading at sea; and Plutarch's Lives—superexcellent biographies, which pit Greek against Roman in beautiful style, but then, in a sailor's estimation, not to be mentioned with the lives of the Admirals; and Blair's Lectures, University Edition, a fine treatise on rhetoric, but having nothing to say about nautical phrases, such as 'splicing the main brace,' 'passing a gammoning,' 'puddin'ing the dolphin,' and 'making a carrick-bend,' besides numerous invaluable but unreadable tomes that might have been purchased cheap at the auction of some college professor's library."