The test of time by which classics are proved has certainly been applied to Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, for it is now just over one hundred years since it was first published. During that century it has constantly risen in the admiration of succeeding generations of readers, and today is as revered as a masterpiece of the literature of the sea as it ever has been in all its long history. It takes an honored place in the Modern Library, introduced by James D. Hart of Harvard University.