MAIDENS OF THE SEA
Far out in the ocean, deep and blue,
Where the winds dance wild and free,
In coral caves, dwells a beautiful band—
The maidens of the sea.
There are stories old, of the mystic tide,
And legends strange, of the deep,
How the witching sound of the siren’s song
Can lull the tempest to sleep.
When moonlight falls on a crystal sea,
When the clouds have backward rolled,
The mermaids sing their low sweet songs,
And their harp strings are of gold.
The billows come from the vast unknown—
From their far-away unseen home;
The waves bring shells to the sandy bar,
And the fairies dance on the foam.
The Technique of the Short
Story
An old rule for those who would be well-dressed
says: “When you have finished, go to the mirror and see what you can take off.”
The same rule applies with equal force to the short story: “When you have
written it out, go over it carefully, and see what you can take out.”
Besides being the best preparation for the writing
of novels, short-story writing is undoubtedly, at the present time, the best
paying and most satisfactory form of any ephemeral literary work. The qualities
which make it successful are to be attained only by constant and patient
practice. The real work of writing a story may be brief, but years of
preparation must be worked through before a manuscript, which may be written in
an hour or so, can present an artistic result.
The first and most important thing to consider is
the central idea. There are only a few ideas in the world, but their
ramifications are countless, and one need never despair of a theme. Your story
may be one of either failure or success, but it must have the true ring. Given
the man and the circumstances, we should know his action.
The plot must unfold naturally; otherwise it will
be a succession of distinct sensations, rather than a complete and harmonious
whole.
There is no better way to produce this effect than
to follow Edmund Russell’s rule of colour in dress: “When a contrasting colour
is introduced, there should be at least two subordinate repetitions of it.”
Each character should appear, or be spoken of, at
least twice before his main action. Following this rule makes one of the
differences between artistic and sensational literature.
The heroine of a dime novel always finds a hero to
rescue her in the nick of time, and perhaps she never sees him again. In the
artistic novel, while the heroine may see the rescuer first at the time she
needs him most, he never disappears altogether from the story.
Description is a thing which is much abused. There
is no truer indication of an inexperienced hand than a story beginning with a
description of a landscape which is not necessary to the plot. If the
peculiarities of the scenery must be understood before the idea can be
developed, the briefest possible description is not out of place. Subjectively,
a touch of landscape or weather is allowable, but it must be purely incidental.
Weather is a very common thing and is apt to be uninteresting.
It is a mistake to tell anything yourself which
the people in the story could inform the reader without your assistance. A
conversation between two people will bring out all the facts necessary as well
as two pages of narration by the author.
There is a way also of telling things from the
point of view of the persons which they concern. Those who have studied Latin
will find the “indirect discourse” of Cicero a useful model.
The people in the story can tell their own peculiarities
better than the author can do it for them. It is not necessary to say that a
woman is a snarling, grumpy person. Bring the old lady in, and let her snarl,
if she is in your story at all.
The choice of words is not lightly to be
considered. Never use two adjectives where one will do, or a weak word where a
stronger one is possible. Fallows’ 100,000 Synonyms and Antonyms and Roget’s
Thesaurus of Words and Phrases will prove invaluable to those who wish to
improve themselves in this respect.
Analysis of sentences which seem to you
particularly strong is a good way to strengthen your vocabulary. Take, for
instance, the oft-quoted expression of George Eliot’s: “Inclination snatches
argument to make indulgence seem judicious choice.” Substitute “takes” for
“snatches” and read the sentence again. Leave out “seem” and put “appear” in
its place. “Proper” is a synonym for “judicious”; substitute it, and put
“selection” in the place of “choice.”
Reading the sentence again we have: “Inclination
takes argument to make indulgence appear proper selection.” The strength is
wholly gone although the meaning is unchanged.
Find out what you want to say, and then say it, in
the most direct English at your command. One of the best models of concise
expressions of thought is to be found in the essays of Emerson. He compresses a
whole world into a single sentence, and a system of philosophy into an epigram.
“Literary impressionism,” which is largely the use
of onomatopoetic words, is a valuable factor in the artistic short story. It is
possible to convey the impression of a threatening sky and a stormy sea without
doing more than alluding to the crash of the surf against the shore. The mind
of the reader accustomed to subtle touches will at once picture the rest.
An element of strength is added also by
occasionally referring an impression to another sense. For instance, the
newspaper poet writes: “The street was white with snow,” and makes his line
commonplace doggerel. Tennyson says: “The streets were dumb with snow,” and his
line is poetry.
“Blackening the background” is a common fault with
story writers. In many of the Italian operas, everybody who does not appear in
the final scene is killed off in the middle of the last act. This wholesale
slaughter is useless as well as inartistic. The true artist does not, in order
that his central figure may stand out prominently, make his background a solid
wall of gloom. Yet gloom has its proper place, as well as joy.
In the old tragedies of the Greeks, just before
the final catastrophe, the chorus is supposed to advance to the centre of the
theatre and sing a bacchanal of frensied exultation.
In the Antigone of Sophocles, just before the
death of Antigone and her lover, the chorus sings an ode which makes one wonder
at its extravagant expression. When the catastrophe occurs, the mystery is
explained. Sophocles meant the sacrifice of Antigone to come home with its full
force; and well he attained his end by use of an artistic method which few of
our writers are subtle enough to recognise and claim for their own purposes.
“High-sounding sentences,” which an inexperienced
writer is apt to put into the mouths of his people, only make them appear
ridiculous. The schoolgirl in the story is too apt to say: “The day has been
most unpleasant,” whereas the real schoolgirl throws her books down with a
bang, and declares that she has “had a perfectly horrid time!”
Her grammar may be incorrect, but her method of
expression is true to life, and there the business of the writer ends.
Put yourself in your hero’s place and see what you
would do under similar circumstances. If you were in love with a young woman,
you wouldn’t get down on your knees, and swear by all that was holy that you
would die if she didn’t marry you, at the same time tearing your hair out by
handfuls, and then endeavour to give her a concise biography of yourself.
You would put your arm around her, the first
minute you had her to yourself, if you felt reasonably sure that she cared for
you, and tell her what she meant to you—perhaps so low that even the author of
the story couldn’t hear what you said, and would have to describe what he saw
afterward in order to let his reader guess what had really happened.
It is a lamentable fact that the description of a
person’s features gives absolutely no idea of his appearance. It is better to
give a touch or two, and let the imagination do the rest. “Hair like raven’s
wing,” and the “midnight eyes,” and many similar things, may be very well
spared. The personal charms of the lover may be brought out through the
mediations of the lovee, much better than by pages of description.
The law of compensation must always have its place
in the artistic story. Those who do wrong must suffer wrong—those who work must
be rewarded, if not in the tangible things they seek, at least in the conscious
strength that comes from struggling. And “poetic justice,” which metes out to
those who do the things that they have done, is relentless and eternal, in art,
as well as in life.
“Style” is purely an individual matter, and, if it
is anything at all, it is the expression of one’s self. Zola has said that,
“art is nature seen through the medium of a temperament,” and the same is true
of literature. Bunner’s stories are as thoroughly Bunner as the man who wrote
them, and The Badge of Courage is nothing unless it be the moody, sensitive,
half-morbid Stephen Crane.
Observation of things nearest at hand and the
sympathetic understanding of people are the first requisites. Do not place the
scene of a story in Europe if you have never been there, and do not assume to
comprehend the inner life of a Congressman if you have never seen one. Do not
write of mining camps if you have never seen a mountain, or of society if you
have never worn evening dress.
James Whitcomb Riley has made himself loved and
honoured by writing of the simple things of home, and Louisa Alcott’s name is a
household word because she wrote of the little women whom she knew. Eugene
Field has written of the children that he loved and understood, and won a truer
fame than if he had undertaken The Master of Zangwill. Kipling’s life in India
has given us Plain Tales from the Hills and The Jungle Book, which Mary E.
Wilkins could not have written in spite of the genius which made her New
England stories the most effective of their kind. Joel Chandler Harris could
not have written The Prisoner of Zenda, but those of us who have enjoyed the
wiles of that “monstus soon beast, Brer Rabbit,” would not have it otherwise.
You cannot write of love unless you have loved, of
suffering unless you have suffered, or of death unless some one who was near to
you has learned the heavenly secret. A little touch of each must teach you the
full meaning of the great thing you mean to write about, or your work will be
lacking. There are few of us to whom the great experiences do not come sooner
or later, and, in the meantime, there are the little everyday happenings, which
are full of sweetness and help, if they are only seen properly, to last until
the great things come to test our utmost strength, to crush us if we are not
strong, and to make us broader, better men and women if we withstand the blow.
And lastly, remember this, that merit is
invariably recognised. If your stories are worth printing, they will fight
their way through “the abundance of material on hand.” The light of the public
square is the unfailing test, and a good story is sure to be published sooner
or later, if a fair amount of literary instinct is exercised in sending it out.
Meteoric success is not desirable. Slow, hard, conscientious work will surely
win its way, and those who are now near the bottom of the ladder are gradually
ascending to make room for the next generation of story-writers on the rounds
below.
TO DOROTHY
There’s a sleepy look in your violet eyes,
So the sails of our ship we’ll unfurl,
And turn the prow to the Land of Rest,
My dear little Dorothy girl.
Twilight is coming soon, little one,
The sheep have gone to the fold;
See! where our white sails bend and dip
In the sunset glow of gold.
The roses nod to the sound of the waves,
And the bluebells sweet are ringing;
Do you hear the music, Dorothy dear?
The song that the angels are singing?
The fairies shall weave their drowsy spell
On the shadowy shore of the stream;
Dear little voyager say “good-night,”
For the birds are beginning to dream.
O white little craft, with sails full spread,
My heart goes out with thee;
God keep thee strong with thy precious freight,
My Dorothy—out at sea.
WRITING A BOOK
Having written a few small books which have been
published by a reputable house, and which have been pleasantly received by both
the press and the public, and having just completed another which I devoutly
pray may meet the same fate, I feel that I may henceforth deem myself an
author.
I have been considered such for some time among my
numerous acquaintances ever since I made my literary bow with a short story in
a literary magazine, years and years ago. Being of the feminine persuasion, I
am usually presented to strangers as “an authoress.” It is at these times that
I wish I were a man.
The social side of authorship is extremely
interesting. At least once a week, I am asked how I “came to write.”
This is difficult, for I do not know. When I so reply,
my questioner ascertains by further inquiries where I was educated and how I
have been trained. Never having been through a “School of Journalism,” my
answer is not satisfactory.
“You must read a great deal in order to get all
those ideas,” is frequently said to me. I reply that I do read a great deal,
being naturally bookish, but that it is the great object of my life to avoid
getting ideas from books. To an author, “Plagiarist” is like the old cry of
“Wolf,” and when an idea is once assimilated it is difficult indeed to
distinguish it from one’s own.
I am often asked how long it takes me to write a
book. I am ashamed to tell, but sometimes the secret escapes, since I am
naturally truthful, and find it hard to parry a direct question. The actual time
of composition is always greeted with astonishment, and I can read the
questioner’s inference, that if I can do so much in so short a time, how much
could I do if I actually worked!
This is always distasteful, so I hasten to add
that the composition is really a very small part of the real writing of a book,
and that authors’ methods differ. My own practice is not to begin to write
until my material is fully arranged in my mind, and I often use notes which I
have been making for a period of months. Such a report is seldom convincing,
however, to my questioners. I am gradually learning, when this inquiry comes,
to smile inscrutably.
It seems strange to many people that I do not work
all the time. If I can write a short story in two hours and be paid thirty
dollars for it, I am an idiot indeed if I do not write at least three in a day!
Ninety dollars a day might easily mount up into a very comfortable income.
Still, there are some who understand that an
author cannot write continuously any more than a spider or a silkworm can spin
all the time. These people ask me when, and where, and how, I get my material.
“Getting material” is supposed to be a secret
process, and I am thought a gay deceiver when I say I make no particular effort
to get it—that it comes in the daily living—like the morning cream! I am then
asked if I rely wholly upon “inspiration.” I answer that “inspiration”
doubtless has its value as well as hard work, and that the author who would
derive all possible benefit from the rare flashes of it must have the same
command of technique that a good workman has of his tools.
The majority learn with surprise that there is
more to a book than is self-evident. It was once my happy lot to put this fact
into the understanding of a lady from the country.
With infinite pains I told her of the constant
study of words, illustrated the fine shades of distinction between synonyms,
spoke of the different ways in which characters and events might be introduced,
and of the subordinate repetition of contrasting themes. She listened in
breathless wonder, and then turned to her daughter: “There, Mame,” she said, “I
told you there was something in it!”
There is nothing so pathetic as the widespread
literary ambition among people whose future is utterly hopeless. It is sad
enough for one who has attained a small success to see the heights which are
ever beyond, and it makes one gentle indeed to those who come seeking aid.
One ambitious soul once asked me if I would teach
her to write. I replied that I did not know of any way in which it could be
taught, but that I would gladly help her if I could. She said she had
absolutely no imagination, and asked me if that would make any difference. I
told her it was certainly an unfortunate circumstance and advised her to
cultivate that quality before she attempted extensive writing. I suppose she is
still doing it, for I have not been asked for further assistance.
People often inquire what qualities I deem
essential to literary success. Imagination is, of course, the first,
observation, the second, and ambition, perseverance and executive ability are
indispensable. Besides these I would place the sense of humour, of proportion,
sympathy, insight,—indeed, there is nothing admirable in human nature which
would come amiss in the equipment of a writer.
The necessity for the humourous sense was recently
brought home to me most forcibly. A woman brought me the manuscript of a novel
which she asked me to read. She felt that something was wrong with it, but she
did not know just what it was. She said it needed “a few little touches,” she
thought, such as my experience would have fitted me to give, and she would be
grateful, indeed, if I would revise it. She added that, owing to the connection
which I had formed with my publishing house, it would be an easy matter for me
to get it published, and she generously offered to divide the royalties with me
if I would consummate the arrangement!
I began to read the manuscript, and had not gone
far when I discovered that it was indeed rare. The entire family read it, or
portions of it, with screams of laughter, and with tears in their eyes,
although it was not intended to be a funny book at all. To this day, certain
phrases from that novel will upset any one of us, even at a solemn time.
Of course it was badly written. Characters
appeared, talked for a few pages, and were never seen or heard from again.
Long conversations were intruded which had no
connection with such plot as there was. Commonplace descriptions of scenery,
also useless, were frequent. Many a time the thread of the story was lost.
There were no distinguishing traits in any one of the characters—they all
talked very much alike. But the supreme defect was the author’s lack of humour.
With all seriousness, she made her people say and do things which were
absolutely ridiculous and not by any means true to life.
I think I must have an unsuspected bit of tact
somewhere for I extricated myself from the situation, and the woman is still my
friend. I did not hurt her feelings about her book, nor did I send it to my
publishers with a letter of recommendation. I remarked that her central idea
was all right, which was true, since it was a love story, but that it had not
been properly developed and that she needed to study. She thanked me for my
counsel and said she would rewrite it. I wish it might be printed just as it
was, however, for it is indeed a sodden and mirthless world in which we live
and move.
As the editors say on the refusal blanks, “I am
always glad to read manuscripts,” although, as a rule, it makes an enemy for me
if I try to help the author by criticism, when only praise was expected or
desired.
Having written some verse which has landed in
respectable places, I am also asked about poetry. Poems written in trochaic
metre with the good old rhymes, “trees and breeze,” “light and night,” soldered
on at the end of the lines, are continually brought to me for revision and
improvement.
Once, for the benefit of the literary aspirant, I
brought out my rhyming dictionary, but I shall never do it again. He looked it
over carefully, while I explained the advantage for the writer in having before
him all the available rhymes, so that the least common might be quickly chosen
and the verse made to run smoothly.
“Humph!” he said; “it’s just the book. Anybody can
write poetry with one of these books!”
My invaluable thesaurus is chained to my desk in
order that it may not escape, and I frequently have to justify its existence
when aliens penetrate my den. “It’s no wonder you can write,” was said to me
once. “Here’s all the English language right on your desk, and all you’ve got
to do is to put it together.”
“Yes,” I
answered wickedly, “but it’s all in the dictionary too.”
Last week I had a rare treat. I met a woman who
had “never seen a literary person before,” and who said “it was quite a
novelty!” I beamed upon her, for it is very nice to be a “novelty,” and after a
while we became quite confidential.
“I want you to tell me just how you write,” she
said, “so’s I can tell the folks at home. I’m going to buy some of your books
to give away.”
Mindful of “royalty to author,” I immediately
became willing to tell anything I could.
“Well, I want to know how you write. Do you just
sit down and do it?”
“Yes, I just sit down and do it.”
“Do you write any special time?”
“No, mornings, usually; but any time will do.”
“What do you write with—a pen or a pencil?”
“Neither, I always use a typewriter.”
“Why, can you write on a typewriter?”
“Yes, it’s much easier than a pen, and it keeps
the ink off your hands. You can write with both hands at once, you know.”
“You have to write it all out with a pencil,
first, don’t you?”
“No, I just think into the keys.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to write it with a pencil
first and then copy it?”
“No, or I’d do it that way.”
“Do you dress any special way when you write?”
“No, only I must be neat and also comfortable. I
usually wear a shirt-waist and take off my collar. Can’t write with a collar
on, but I must be well groomed otherwise.”
There was a long silence. The little lady was
digesting the information which she had just received.
“It seems easy enough,” she said. “I should think
any one could write. What do you do when it is done?”
“Oh, I go all over it and revise very carefully.”
“Why, do you have to go all over it, after it is
done?”
“Certainly.”
“Then it takes you longer than it does most people,
doesn’t it?”
“I cannot say as to that. Everybody revises.”
“Why, when I write a letter, if I go over it I
always scratch out so much that I have to do it over.”
“That’s the idea, exactly,” I replied. “I go over
it until there isn’t a thing to be scratched out, or a word to be changed.”
“But you’ve got lots left,” she said, enviously.
“When I go over a letter there’s hardly anything left.”
Innumerable questions followed these, but at last
she had her curiosity partially satisfied and turned away from me. I trust,
however, that I shall some day meet her again, for she too is “a novelty!”
The mechanical part of a book is a source of great
wonder to the uninitiated. My galley proofs were once passed around among the guests
at a summer hotel as if they were some new strange animal. They did not
understand page proofs nor plates, nor how I could ever know when it was right.
The cover is frequently commented upon as a thing
of beauty (which with my publishers it always is), and I am asked if I did it.
I am always sorry that I do not know enough to do covers, so I have to explain
that an artist does that—that I often do not see it until the first copies come
from the bindery, and that I am of such small importance that I am not often
consulted in relation to the matter—being merely the poor worm who wrote the
book.
There are many people who seem to be afraid to
talk before me lest their pearly utterances be transformed into copy. Time and
time again I have heard this: “We must be very careful what we say now, or Miss
—— will put us into a book!”
People are strangely literal. An author gets no
credit whatever for inventive faculty—his characters and stories are supposedly
real people and real things. I am asked how I came to know so much about such
and such a thing. I once wrote a love story with an unhappy ending and it was
at once assumed that I had been disappointed in love!
When my first book came from the press I was
pointed out at a reception as the author of it. The man surveyed me long and
carefully, then he announced: “That’s a mistake. That girl never wrote that
book. She’s too frivolous and empty headed!”
I have tried, until I am discouraged, to make
people understand that a book does not have to be a verity in order to be true—that
a story must be possible, instead of actual, and that actual circumstances may
be too unreal for literature.
There are always people who will ask that things,
even books, may be written especially for them. People often want to tell me a
story and let me write it up into a nice book and divide the royalties with
them! During a summer at the coast, I had endless opportunities to write
biographical sketches of the guests at the hotel—to write a story and put them
all into it, or to write something about anything, that they might have as “a
souvenir!” As a matter of fact, there were only two people at the hotel who
could have been of any possible use as copy, and one of these was a woman to
whom only Mr. Stockton could have done justice.
It was hard to be always good-natured, but I lost
my temper only once. We stayed late into the autumn and were rewarded by a
magnificent storm. I put on my bathing suit and my mackintosh and went down to
the beach, in the teeth of a northwest gale. Little needles of sand were blown
in my face, and I lost my cap, but it was well worth the effort. For over an
hour we stood on the desolate beach, sheltered from the sand by a bath house. I
had never seen anything so grand—it was far beyond words. At last it grew dark
and I was soaked through and stiff with the cold. So I went back to the hotel,
my soul struck dumb by the might and glory of the sea. My heart was too full to
speak. The majestic chords were still thundering in my ears; that
tempest-tossed ocean was still before my eyes. On my way upstairs I met a woman
whom I had formerly liked.
“Oh, Miss ——, I want you to write me a description
of that storm!” I brushed past her, rudely, I fear, and she caught hold of the
cape of my mackintosh with elephantine playfulness. “You can’t go,” she said
coquettishly, “until you promise to write me a description of that storm!”
“I can’t write it,” I said coldly. “Please let me
go.”
“You’ve got to write it,” she returned. “I know
you can, and I won’t let you go until you promise me.”
I wrenched myself away from her, white with wrath,
and got to my room before she did, though she was still pursuing me. I locked
my door and had a hard fight for my self-control. From the beach came the
distant boom of the surf, mingled with the liquid melody of the returning
breakers.
Later, just as I had finished dressing for dinner,
there was a tap at my door. My friend (?) stood there beaming. “Have you got it
done? You know you promised to write me a description of that storm!”
She remained only three days longer, and I stayed
away from her as much as possible, but occasional meetings were inevitable.
When the gladsome time of parting came, she hung about my neck.
“I want you to come and see me,” she said. “You
know you haven’t done what you said you would. Don’t you forget to write me a
description of that storm!”
My business arrangements with my publishers are
seemingly a matter of public interest. I am asked how much it costs to print a
book the size of mine. People are surprised to find that I do not pay the
expenses and that I haven’t the least idea of what it costs.
Then they want to know if the publisher buys the
book of me. I explain that this is sometimes done, but that I myself am paid
upon the royalty basis, —— per cent. on the list price of every copy sold. This
seems painfully small to the dear public, but it is comparatively easy to
demonstrate that the royalty on five or six thousand copies is quite worth
while.
They shortly come to the conclusion, however, that
the publishers make more money than I do, and that seems to them to be very
unfair. They suggest that if I published it myself, I should make a great deal
more money!
It is difficult for them to understand that
writing books and selling books are two very different propositions—that I
don’t know enough to sell books, and that the imprint of a reputable house upon
the title-page is worth a great deal to any author.
“Well,” a man once said to me, “how much did you
make out of your book this year?”
I explained that the percentage royalty basis was
really an equal division of the profits, everything considered, and that all the
financial risk was on one side. I named my few hundreds, with which I was very
well satisfied. He absorbed himself in a calculation on the back of an
envelope.
“I figure out,” said he, at length, “that they
must have made at least a third more than you did. That isn’t fair!”
My ire arose. “It is perfectly fair,” I replied.
“Paper is cheap, I know, but composition isn’t, and advertising isn’t. They are
welcome to every penny they can make out of my books. I’d be glad to have them
make twice as much as they do now, even if my own income remained the same.”
At this point, I became telepathically aware that
I was considered crazy, so I changed the subject.
I am often asked how I happened to meet my
publishers and “get in with them,” and as a very great favour to me, and to
them, I am offered the privilege of sending them some “splendid novel which was
written by a friend” of somebody—as they know me, “they have decided to let my
publishers have the book!”
They are surprised to hear me say that I have
never met any member of the firm, though I was in the same city with them for
over a year. More than this, there is nothing on earth, except a green worm,
which would scare me so much as a summons to that publishing house.
I have walked by in fear and trembling. I have
seen a huge pile of my books in the window, and on the bulletin board a poster
which bore my name in conspicuous letters, as if I had been cured of something.
But I should no more dare to go into that office than I should venture to call
upon the wife of the President with a shawl over my head, and my fancywork
tucked under my arm.
This is incomprehensible to the uninitiated. The
publishers have ever been most courteous and kind. They are people with whom it
is a pleasure to have any sort of business dealings, but we are not bosom
friends—and I very much fear that they do not care to become chummy with me.
There may be some authors who have taken nerve
tonics and are not afraid to meet an editor or publisher. I have even read of
some who will walk cheerfully into an editorial sanctum—but I’ve never seen a
sanctum, nor an editor, nor a publisher. I don’t even write to an editor when I
send him a piece—just put in a stamp. He usually knows what to do with it.
Fame, or long experience, may enable authors to
meet the arbiters of their destiny without becoming frightened, but I have had
brief experience, and still less fame. The admirable qualities of the pachyderm
may have been bestowed upon some authors—but not on this one.
THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN
Now let the eagle flap his wings
And let the cannon roar,
For while the conquering bullet sings
We pledge the commodore.
First battle of a righteous war
Right royally he won,
But here’s a health to the jolly tar—
To the man behind the gun!
Now praise be to the flag-ship’s spars—
To the captain in command,
And honour to the Stripes and Stars
For whose defence they stand;
And for the pilot at his wheel
Let the streams of red wine run,
But here’s a health to the man of steel—
The man behind the gun!
Here’s to the man who does not swerve
In the face of any foe;
Here’s to the man of iron nerve,
On deck and down below;
Here’s to the man whose heart is glad
When the battle has begun;
Here’s to the health of that daring lad—
To the man behind the gun!
Now let the Stars and Stripes float high
And let the eagle soar;
Until the echoes make reply
We pledge the commodore.
Here’s to the chief and here’s to war,
And here’s to the fleet that won,
And here’s a health to the jolly tar—
To the man behind the gun!
