The story of how Miss Agnes Weston, " the Sailors' Friend," became the " Mother of the Navy" illustrates in a striking manner the important part chance sometimes plays in our lives. Miss Weston spent a very quiet, old-fashioned girlhood in Bath, where she taught in a Sunday school. One of the lads in whom she was interested was going out to India as a soldier, and he asked his teacher to write to him. She did so, and on the voyage out he showed the letter to the sick-berth steward, who observed, " I would give anything if I could get a letter like that sometimes." When the soldier answered Miss Weston's letter, he told her of the sailor's comment, and her kind heart prompted her to write to this man also. And that was the beginning of Miss Weston's association with the Navy, and of the work which ultimately led to the founding of the Royal Sailors' Rests at Portsmouth and Devonport, which have been of such immense benefit to the men who go down to the sea in ships. It was in May, 1876, that the first Sailors' Home in the world was opened, and since then there has arisen the palatial Royal Sailors' Rest at Devonport, to say nothing of numerous benevolent agencies for the good of our seamen, all of which owe their inception to this noble-hearted lady. Miss Wes - ton, who is a Londoner by birth, is an Hon. Doctor of Law of Glasgow University. An account of the noble work of Miss Agnes Weston and her coadjutor, Miss Wintz, was given on p. 560, Vol. 1., of Every Woman's Encyclopaedia.

Miss Agnes Weston Dinham