leggins delight their simple souls with cries of 'twenty-one days.'
New goats have sprung up to take your place in the life of the camp
and belittle your past achievements, but to me, O unregenerate goat,
you shall ever remain a refreshing memory. Good butting, O excellent
ruminant, wherever thou should chance to be. I salute you."

This soliloquy brought me to the verge of an emotional break-down. I
departed the spot in silence. On my way back through Probation I
chanced upon a group of rookies studying for their examinations and
was surprised to remember how much I had contrived to forget.
Nevertheless I stopped one of the students and asked him what a
"hakamaback" was and found to my relief that he didn't know.

"Back to your manual," said I gloomily, "I fear you will never be a
sailor."

Having thus made heavy the heart of another, I continued on my way
feeling somehow greatly cheered only to find upon entering my barracks
that my blankets were in the lucky bag. How did I ever forget to place
them in my hammock? It was a natural omission though, I fancy, for the
master-at-arms so terrifies me in the morning with his great shouts of
"Hit the deck, sailor! Shake a leg--rise an' shine" that I am unnerved
for the remainder of the day.


_April 29th._ Life seems to be composed of just one parade after
another. I am weary of the plaudits and acclamation of the multitude
and long for some sequestered spot on a mountain peak in Thibet. Every
time I see a street I instinctively start to walk down the middle of
it. Last week I was one of the many thousands of Pelham men who
marched along Fifth Avenue in the Liberty Loan parade. I thought I was
doing particularly well and would have made a perfect score if one of
my leggins hadn't come off right in front of the reviewing stand much
to the annoyance of the guy behind me because he tripped on it and
almost dropped his gun. For the remainder of the parade I was
subjected to a running fire of abuse that fairly made my flesh crawl.

At the end of the march I ran into a rather nebulous, middle-aged sort
of a gentleman soldier who was sitting on the curb looking moodily at
a manhole as if he would like to jump in it.

"Hello, stranger," says I in a blustery, seafaring voice, "you look as
if you'd been cursed at about as much as I have. What sort of an
outfit do you belong to?"

He scrutinized one of his buttons with great care and then told me all
about himself.

"I'm a home guard, you know," he added bitterly, "all we do is to
escort people. I've escorted the Blue Devils, the Poilus, the
Australians, mothers of enlisted men, mothers of men who would have
enlisted if they could, Boy Scouts and loan workers until my dogs are
jolly well near broken down on me. Golly, I wish I was young enough to
enjoy a quiet night's sleep in the trenches for a change."

Later I saw him gloomily surveying the world from the window of a
passing cab. He was evidently through for the time being at least.


_April 30th._ I took my bar-keeping pal home over the last week-end
liberty. It was a mistake. He admits it himself. Mother will never
have him in the house again. Mother could never get him in the house
again. He fears her. The first thing he did was to mix poor dear
grandfather a drink that caused the old gentleman to forget his game
leg which had been damaged in battles, ranging anywhere from the
Mexican to the Spanish wars, according to grandfather's mood at the
time he is telling the story, but which I believe, according to a
private theory of mine, was really caught in a folding bed. However it
was, grandfather forgot all about this leg of his entirely and
insisted on dancing with Nora, our new maid. Mother, of course, was
horrified. But not content with that, this friend of mine concocted
some strange beverage for the pater which so delighted him that he
loaned my so-called pal the ten spot I had been intending to borrow.
The three of them sat up until all hours of the night playing cards
and telling ribald stories. As mother took me upstairs to bed she
gazed down on her father-in-law and her husband in the clutches of
this demon and remarked bitterly to me:

"Like father, like son," and I knew that she was thoroughly determined
to make both of them pay dearly for their pleasant interlude.
Breakfast the next morning was a rather trying ordeal. Grandfather
once more resorted to his game leg with renewed vigor, referring
several times to the defense of the Alamo, so I knew he was pretty low
in his mind. Father withdrew at the sight of bacon. Mother laughed
scornfully as he departed. My friend ate a hearty breakfast and kept a
sort of a happy-go-lucky monologue throughout its entire course. I
took him out walking afterward and forgot to bring him back.

[Illustration: "THE FIRST THING HE DID WAS TO MIX POOR DEAR
GRANDFATHER A DRINK"]


_April 31st._ Have just come off guard duty and feel quite exhausted.
The guns are altogether too heavy. I can think of about five different
things I could remove from them without greatly decreasing their
utility. The first would be the barrel. The artist who drew the
picture in the last camp paper of Dawn appearing in the form of a
beautiful woman must have had more luck than I have ever had. I think
he would have been closer to the truth if he had put her in a speeding
automobile on its way home from a road house. It surely is a proof of
discipline to hear the mocking, silver-toned laughter of women ring
out in the night only ten feet away and not drop your gun and follow
it right through the barbed wire. After the war, I am going to buy
lots of barbed wire and cut it up into little bits just to relieve my
feelings.

Last night I had the fright of my life. Some one was fooling around
the fence in the darkness.

"Who's there?" I cried.

"Why, I'm Kaiser William," came the answer in a subdued voice.

"Well, I wish you'd go away, Kaiser William," said I nervously,
"you're busting the lights out of rule number six."

"What's that?" asks the voice.

"Not to commit a nuisance with any one except in a military manner," I
replied, becoming slightly involved.

"That's not such a wonderful rule," came back the voice in complaining
tones. "I could make up a rule better than that."

"Don't try to to-night," I pleaded.

There was silence for a moment, then the voice continued seriously,
"Say, I'm not Kaiser William really. Honest I'm not."

"Well, who are you?" I asked impatiently.

"Why, I'm Tucks," the voice replied. "Folks call me that because I
take so many of them in my trousers."

"Well, Tucks," I replied, "you'd better be moving on. I don't know
what might happen with this gun. I'm tempted to shoot the cartridge
out of it just to make it lighter."

"Oh, you can't shoot me," cried Tucks, "I'm crazy. I bet you didn't
know that, did you?"

"I wasn't sure," I answered.

"Oh, I'm awfully crazy," continued Tucks, "everybody says so, and I
look it, too, in the daylight."

"You must," I replied.

"Well, good night," said Tucks in the same subdued voice. "If you find
a flock of pink Liberty Bonds around here, remember I lost them." He
departed in the direction of City Island.

[Illustration: "I WAS TEMPTED TO SHOOT THE CARTRIDGE OUT JUST TO MAKE
IT LIGHTER"]


_May 1st._ I visited the office of the camp paper to-day and found it
to be an extremely hectic place. In the course of a conversation with
the Chief I chanced to look up and caught two shining eyes staring
malevolently at me from a darkened corner of the room. This creature
blinked at me several times very rapidly, wiggled its mustache and
suddenly disappeared into the thick shadows.

"Who is that?" I cried, startled.

"That's our mad photographer," said the Chief. "What do you think of
him?"

"Do you keep him in there?" I asked, pointing to the coal-black
cupboard-like room into which this strange creature had disappeared.

"Yes," said the Chief, "and he likes it. Often he stays there for days
at a time, only coming out for air." At this juncture there came from
the dark room the sounds of breaking glass, which was immediately
followed by strange animal-like sounds as the mad photographer burst
out of his den and proclaimed to all the world that nothing meant very
much in his life and that it would be absolutely immaterial to him if
the paper and its entire staff should suddenly be visited with flood,
fire and famine. After this gracious and purely gratuitous piece of
information he again withdrew, but strange mutterings still continued
to issue forth from his lair. While I was sitting in the office the
editor happened to drift in from the adjacent room crisply attired in
a pair of ragged, disreputable trousers and a sleeveless gray sweater
which was raveling in numerous places. It was the shock of my life.

"Where's our yeoman?" he grumbled, at which the yeoman, who somehow
reminded me of some character from one of Dickens's novels, edged out
of the door, but he was too late. Spying him, the editor launched
forth on a violent denunciation, in which for no particular reason the
cartoonist and sporting editor joined. There they stood, the three of
them, abusing this poor simple yeoman in the most unnecessary manner
as far as I could make out. Three harder cut-throats I have never
encountered. While in the office, I came upon a rather elderly artist
crouched over in a corner writhing as if he was in great pain. He was
in the throes of composition, I was told, and he looked it. Poor
wretch, he seemed to have something on his mind. The only man I saw
who seemed to have anything like a balanced mind was the financial
shark, a little ferret-eyed, onery-looking cuss whom I wouldn't have
trusted out of my sight. He was sitting with his nose thrust in some
dusty volume totally oblivious of the pandemonium that reigned around
him. He either has a great mind or none at all--probably the latter. I
fear I would never make an editor. The atmosphere is simply
altogether too strenuous for me.


_May 4th._ There seems to be no place in the service for me; I cannot
decide what rating to select. To be a quartermaster one must know how
to signal, and signaling always tires my arms. One must know how to
blow a horrid shrill little whistle in order to become a boatswain
mate, and my ears could never stand this. To be a yeoman, it is
necessary to know how to rattle papers in an important manner and
disseminate misinformation with a straight face, and this I could
never do. I fear the only thing left for me is to try for a
commission. I'm sure I would be a valuable addition to any wardroom.


_May 6th._ "Man the drags! Hey, there, you flannel-footed camel, stop
galloping! What are you doing, anyway--playing horses?"

"Don't be ridiculous," I cried out, hot with rage and humiliation;
"you know perfectly well I'm not playing horse. I realize as well as
you do that this is a serious--"

At this juncture of my brave retort a gun barrel stove in the back of
my head, some one kicked me on the shin and in some indescribable
manner the butt of a rifle became entangled between my feet, and down
I went in a cloud of dust and oaths. One-fourth of the entire Pelham
field artillery passed over my body, together with its crew, while
through the roar and confusion raised by this horrible cataclysm I
could hear innumerable C.P.O.'s howling and blackguarding me in
frenzied tones, and I dimly distinguished their forms dancing in rage
amid descending billows of dust. The parade ground swirled dizzily
around me, but I had no desire to arise and begin life anew. It would
not be worth while. I felt that I had at the most only a short time to
live, and that that was too long. The world offered nothing but the
most horrifying possibilities to me. "What is the Biltmore to a man in
uniform, anyway?" I remember thinking to myself as I lay there with my
nose pressed flat to an ant hill, "all the best parts of it are arid
districts, waste places, limitless Saharas to him. Death, where is thy
sting?" I continued, as an outraged ant assaulted my nose. The world
came throbbing back. I felt myself being dragged violently away from
my resting place. I was choking. Bidding farewell to the ants, I
prepared myself to swoon when gradually, as if from a great distance,
I heard the voice of my P.O. He was almost crying.

"Take him out," he pleaded; "for Gord sake, take him out. He's hurtin'
our gun."

[Illustration: "ONE FOURTH OF THE ENTIRE PELHAM FIELD ARTILLERY PASSED
OVER MY BODY"]

This remark gave me the strength to rise, but not gracefully. My
intention was to address a few handpicked words to this P.O. of mine,
but fortunately for my future peace of mind I was beyond utterance.
Weakly I tottered in the direction of the gun, hoping to support
myself upon it.

"Hey, come away from that gun!" howled the P.O. "Don't let him touch
it, fellers," he pleaded. "Don't let him even go near it. He'll spoil
it. He'll completely destroy it."

"Say, Buddy," said the Chief to me, and how I hated the ignominy of
the word, "I guess I'll take you out of the game for to-day. I'm
responsible for Government property, and you are altogether too big a
risk."

"What shall I do?" I asked, huskily. "Where shall I go?"

"Do?" he repeated, in a thoughtful voice. "Go? Well, here's where you
can go," and he told me, "and this is what you can do when you get
there," and as I departed rather hastily he told me this also. The
entire parade ground heard him. How shall I ever be able to hold up my
head again in Camp? I departed the spot, but only under one boiler;
however, I made fair speed. Like a soldier returning from a week in
the trenches, I sought the comfort and seclusion of the Y.M.C.A. Here
I witnessed a checker contest of a low order between two unscrupulous
brothers. They had a peculiar technique completely their own. It
consisted of arts and dodges and an extravagant use of those
adjectives one is commonly supposed to shun.

"Say, there's a queen down at the end of the room," one of them would
suddenly exclaim, and while the other brother was gazing eagerly in
that direction he would deliberately remove several of his men from
the board. But the other brother, who was not so balmy as he
looked, would occasionally discover this slight irregularity and
proceed to express his opinion of it by word of mouth, which for sheer
force of expression was in the nature of a revelation to me. It was
appalling to sit there and watch those two young men, who had
evidently at one time come from a good home, sit in God's bright
sunshine and cheat each other throughout the course of an afternoon
and lie out of it in the most obvious manner. The game was finally
discontinued, owing to a shortage of checkermen which they had
secreted in their pockets, a fact which each one stoutly denied with
many weird and rather indelicate vows. I left them engaged in the
pleasant game of recrimination, which had to do with stolen golf
balls, the holding out of change and kindred sordid subjects. In my
weakened condition this display of fraternal depravity so offended my
instinctive sense of honor that I was forced to retire behind the
protecting pages of a 1913 issue of "The Farmer's Wife Indispensable
Companion," where I managed to lose myself for the time in a rather
complicated exposition of how to tell which chicken laid what egg if
any or something to that effect, an article that utterly demolished
the moral character of the average hen, leaving her hardly a leg to
roost on.


_May 8th._ "Give away," said the coxswain to-day, when we were
struggling to get our cutter off from the pier, and I gave away to
such an extent, in fact, that I suddenly found myself balanced
cleverly on the back of my neck in the bottom of the boat, so that I
experienced the rather odd sensation of feeling the hot sun on the
soles of my feet. This procedure, of course, did not go unnoticed.
Nothing I do goes unnoticed, save the good things. The coxswain made a
few comments which showed him to be a thoroughly ill-bred person, but
further than this I was not persecuted. After we had rowed
interminable distances through leagues upon leagues of doggedly
resisting water a man in the bow remarked casually that he had several
friends in Florida we might call upon if we kept it up a little
longer, but the coxswain comfortably ensconced upon the hackamatack,
was so deeply engrossed in the perusal of a vest pocket edition of the
"Merchant of Venice" that he failed to grasp the full meaning of the
remark. I lifted my rapidly glazing eyes with no little effort from
the keelson and discovered to my horror that we had hardly passed more
than half a mile of shore-line at the most. What we had been doing all
the time I was unable to figure out. I thought we had been rowing. I
could have sworn we had been rowing, but apparently we had not. I
looked up from my meditation in time to catch the ironical gaze of the
coxswain upon me, and I involuntarily braced myself to the assault.

[Illustration: "THE PROCEDURE, OF COURSE, DID NOT GO UNNOTICED"]

"Say, there, sailor," said he, with a slow, unpleasant drawl, "you're
not rowing; you're weaving. It's fancy work you're doing, blast yer
eyes!"

All who had sufficient strength left in them laughed jeeringly at this
wise observation, but I retained a dignified silence--that is, so far
as a man panting from exhaustion can be silent. At this moment we
passed a small boat being rowed briskly along by a not unattractive
girl.

"Now, watch her," said the coxswain, helpfully, to me; "study the way
that poor fragile girl, that mere child, pulls the oars, and try to do
likewise."

I observed in shamed silence. My hands ached. A motor boat slid
swiftly by and I distinctly saw a man drinking beer from the bottle.
"Hell isn't dark and smoky," thought I to myself; "hell is bright and
sunny, and there is lots of sparkling water in it and on the sparkling
water are innumerable boats and in these boats are huddled the poor
lost mortals who are forced to listen through eternity to the wise
cracks of cloven-hoofed, spike-tailed coxswains. That's what hell is,"
thought I, "and I am in my probation period right now."

"Feather your oars!" suddenly screamed our master at the straining
crew.

"Feather me eye!" yelled back a courageous Irishman. "What do you
think these oars are, anyway--a flock of humming birds? Whoever heard
of feathering a hundred-ton weight? Feather Pike's Peak, say I; it's
just as easy."

Somehow we got back to the pier, but I was almost delirious by this
time. The last part of the trip was all one drab, dull nightmare to
me. This evening my hands were so swollen I was forced to the
extremity of bribing a friend to hold the telephone receiver for me
when I called up mother.

"What have you been doing?" she asked.

"Rowing," came my short answer.

"What a splendid outing!" she exclaimed. "You had such a lovely day
for it, didn't you, dear?"

"Hang up that receiver!" I shouted to my friend; "hang it up, or my
mother shall hear from the lips of her son words she should only hear
from her husband."


_May 9th._ I am just after having been killed in a sham battle, and so
consequently I feel rather ghastly to-day. I don't exactly know
whether I was a Red or a Blue, because I did a deal of fighting on
both sides, but always with the same result. I was killed instantly
and completely. People got sick of putting me out of my misery after a
while and I was allowed to wander around at large in a state of great
mystification and excitement, shooting my blank bullets into the face
of nature in an aimless sort of manner whenever the battle began to
pall upon me.

Most of the time I passed pleasantly on the soft, fresh flank of a
hill where for a while I slept until a cow breathed heavily in my face
and reminded me that it was war after all. My instructions were to
keep away from the guns, and get killed as soon as possible. As these
instructions were not difficult to follow, I carried them out to the
letter. I stayed away from the guns and I permitted myself to be
killed several times in order to make sure it would take. After that I
became a sort of composite camp follower, deserter and straggler.

In my wandering I chanced upon an ancient enemy of many past
encounters.

"Are you Red or Blue?" I asked, preparing to die for the fifth time.

"No," he answered, sarcastically, "I'm what you might call elephant
ear gray."

"Are you the guy the reporter for the camp paper was referring to in
his last story?" I asked him.

"Yes," he replied, "the slandering blackguard."

"You hit me on the nose with a push-ball," said I.

"I'll do it again," said he.

"That reporter, evidently a man of some observation, said you didn't
wash your neck and that you had the habits of a camel."

"But I do wash my neck," he said, stubbornly, "and I don't know
anything about the habits of a camel, but whatever they might happen
to be, I haven't got 'em."

"Yes," I replied, as if to myself, "you certainly should wash your
neck. That's the very least you could do."

"But I tell you," he cried, desperately, "I keep telling you that I do
wash my neck. Why do you go on talking about it as if I didn't! I tell
you now, once for all time, that I do wash my neck, and that ends it.
Don't talk any more. I want to think."

We sat in silence for a space, then I remarked casually, almost
inaudibly, "and you certainly shouldn't have the habits of a camel."

The depraved creature stirred uneasily. "I ain't got 'em," he said.

"Good," I cried heartily. "We understand each other perfectly. In the
future you will try to wash your neck and cease from having the habits
of a camel. No compromise is necessary. I know you will keep your
word."

"Go away quickly," he gasped, searching around for a stone to hurl at
me, and discarding several because of their small size. "Go away to
somewhere else. I'm telling you now, go away or else a special detail
will find your lifeless body here in the bushes some time to-morrow."

"I've already been thoroughly killed several times to-day," I said,
putting a tree between us, "but don't forget about the camel, and for
heaven's sake do try to keep your neck--"

A stone hit the tree with a resounding crack, and I increased the
distance.

"Damn the torpedoes!" I shouted back as I disappeared into the
pleasant security of the sun-warmed woods.


_May 11th._ "What navy do you belong to?" asked an Ensign, stopping me
to-day, "the Chinese?"

"Why do you ask, sir?" I replied, saluting gracefully. "Of course I
don't belong to the Chinese Navy."

"What's your rating?" he snapped. "Show girl first class attached to
the good ship Biff! Bang! sir," came my prompt retort.

"Well, put a watch mark on your arm, sailor, and put it there pronto,
or you'll be needing an understudy to pinch hit for you."

As a matter of fact I have never put my watch mark on, for the simple
reason that I have been rather expecting a rating at any moment, but
it seems as if my expectations were doomed to disappointment.

Nothing matters much, anyway, now, however, for I have been selected
from among all the men in the station to play the part of a Show Girl
in the coming magnificent Pelham production, "Biff! Bang!" At last I
have found the occupation to which by training and inclination I am
naturally adapted. The Grand Moguls that are running this show came
around the barracks the other day looking for material, and when they
gazed upon me I felt sure that their search had not been in vain.

"Why don't you write a 'nut' part for him?" asked one of them of the
playwright as they surveyed me critically as if I was some rare
specimen of bug life.

"That would never do," he answered. "Real 'nuts' can never play the
part on the stage. You've got to have a man of intelligence."

"Look here," I broke in. "You've got to stop talking about me before
my face as if I wasn't really present. Nuts I may be, but I can still
understand English, even when badly spoken, and resent it. Lay off
that stuff or I'll be constrained to introduce you to a new brand of
'Biff! Bang!'"

Saying this, I struck an heroic attitude, but it seemed to produce no
startling change in their calm, deliberate examination of me.

"He'll do, I think, as a Show Girl," the dance-master mused dreamily.
"Like a cabbage, every one of his features is bad, but the whole
effect is not revolting. Strange, isn't it, how such things happen."
At this point the musician broke in.

"He ain't agoing to dance to my music if I know it. He'll ruin it." At
which remark I executed a few rather simple but nevertheless neat
steps I had learned at the last charity Bazaar to which I had
contributed my services, and these few steps were sufficient to close
the deal. I was signed up on the spot. As they were leaving the
barracks one excited young person ran up and halted the arrogant
Thespians. "If I get the doctor to remove my Adam's Apple," he pleaded
wistfully, "do you think you could take me on as a pony?"

"No," said one of them, not without a certain show of kindness. "I
fear not. It would be necessary for him to remove the greater part of
your map and graft a couple of pounds on to your sadly unendowed
limbs."

From that day on my life has become one of unremitting toil. Together
with the rest of the Show Girls I vamp and slouch my way around the
clock with ever increasing seductiveness. We are really doing
splendidly. The ponies come leaping lightly across the floor waving
their freckled, muscular arms from side to side and looking very
unattractive indeed in their B.V.D.'s, high shoes and sock supporters.
"I can see it all," says the Director, in an enthusiastic voice, and
if he can I'll admit he has some robust quality of imagination that I
fail to possess.

Us Show Girls, of course, have to be a little more modest than the
ponies, so we retain our white trousers. These are rolled up, however,
in order to afford the mosquitoes, who are covering the show most
conscientiously, room to roost on. And sad to relate, the life is
beginning to affect the boys. Only yesterday I saw one of our toughest
ponies vamping up the aisle of Mess Hall No. 2 with his tray held over
his head in the manner of a Persian slave girl. The Jimmy-legs,
witnessing this strange sight, dropped his jaw and forgot to lift it
up again. "Sweet attar of roses," he muttered. "What ever has happened
to our poor, long-suffering navy?" At the door of the Mess Hall the
pony bowed low to the deck and withdrew with a coy backward flirt of
his foot.

I can't express in words the remarkable appearance made by some of our
seagoing chorus girls when they attempt to assume the light and airy
graces of the real article. Some of the men have so deeply entered
into their parts that they have attained absolute self-forgetfulness,
with the result that they leap and preen about in a manner quite
startling to the dispassionate spectator. My career so far has not
been a personal triumph. In the middle of a number, the other night,
the dancing master clapped his hands violently together, a signal he
uses when he wants all motion to cease.

"Take 'em down to the end of the room, boys," he said. "I can tell
three minutes ahead of time when things are going to go wrong. That
man on the end didn't have a thought in his head. He would have
smeared the entire number." I was the man on the end.


_May 23d._ This has not been a particularly agreeable day, although to
a woman no doubt it would have been laden with moments of exquisite
ecstasy. Feminine apparel for me has lost for ever the charm of
mystery that formerly touched it with enchantment. There is nothing I
do not know now. Its innermost secret has been revealed and its
revelation has brought with it its full burden of woe. All knowledge
is pain and vice versa. I have always admired women; whether so
profoundly as they have admired me I know not; however that may be, I
have always admired them collectively and individually in the past,
but after today's experience my admiration is tinged with pity. The
source of these reflections lies in no less an article than a corset.
As a Show Girl, it has been my lot to be provided with one of these
fiendish devices of medieval days. It is too much. The corset must go.
No woman could have experienced the pain and discomfort I have been
subjected to this day without feeling entitled to the vote. Yet I dare
say there are women who would gladly be poured into a new corset every
day of their lives. They can have mine for the asking. Life at its
best presents a narrow enough outlook without resorting to cunningly
wrought devices such as corsets in order further to confine one's
point of view or abdomen, which amounts to the same thing. The whale
is a noble animal, it was a very good idea, the whale, and I love
every bone in its body, so long as it keeps them there. So tightly was
my body clutched in the embrace of this vicious contraption that I
found it impossible to inhale my much needed cigarette. The smoke
would descend no further than my throat. The rest of me was a closed
port, a roadway blocked to traffic. I have suffered.

But there were also other devices, other soft, seductive under
strappings. I know them all to their last most intimate detail. I
feel that now I could join a woman's sewing circle and talk with as
much authority and wisdom as the most veteraned corset wearer present.
My views would be radical perhaps but at least they would have the
virtue of being refreshing.

However, I can see some good coming out of my unavoidably acquired
knowledge of female attire. In future days, while my wife is out
purchasing shirts and neckties for me, I can easily employ my time to
advantage in shopping around Fifth Avenue in search of the correct
thing in lingerie for her. It will be a great help to the household
and I am sure impress my wife with the depth and range of my
education, which I will be able to tell her, thank God, was innocently
acquired.


_May 28th._ I am slowly forming back into my pristine shape but only
after having been freed from bondage for some hours. After several
more sodas, concoctions which up till recently I have despised as
injurious, I guess I will have filled out to my usual dimensions
around the waist line, but when I consider the long days of womanhood
stretched out before me in the future I will admit it is with a
sinking not only of the waist, but also of the heart.

More indignities have been heaped upon me. Why did I ever take up the
profession of a show girl? To-day I fell into the clutches of the
barbers. They were not gentle clutches, brutal rather; and such an
outspoken lot they were at that.

"What's that?" asked one of them as I stood rather nervously before
him with bared chest.

"Why, that," I replied, a trifle disconcerted, "that's my chest."

He looked at me for a moment, then smiled a slow, pitying smile. "Hey,
Tony," he suddenly called to his colleague, "come over here a moment
and see what this bird claims to be a chest."

All this yelled in the faces of the entire Biff-Bang company. It was
more inhuman and debasing than my first physical examination in
public. The doctors on this occasion, although they had not
complimented me, had at least been comparatively impersonal in
despatching their offices, but these men were far from being
impersonal. I perceived with horror that it was their intention to use
my chest as a means of bringing humor into their drab existences. Tony
came and surveyed me critically.

"That," he drawled musically, "ees not a chest. That ees the bottom
part of hees neck."

"I know it is," replied the other, "but somehow his arms have gotten
mixed up in the middle of it."

Tony shrugged his shoulders eloquently. He assumed the appearance of a
man completely baffled.

"Honestly, now, young feller," continued my first tormentor, "are you
serious when you try to tell us that that is your chest?"

He drew attention to the highly disputed territory by poking me
diligently with his thumb.

"That's the part the doctor always listened to whenever I had a cold,"
I replied as indifferently as possible. The man pondered over this for
a moment.

"Well," he replied at length, "probably the doctor was right, but to
the impartial observer it would seem to be, as my friend Tony so
accurately observed, the bottom part of your neck."

"It really doesn't matter much after all," I replied, hoping to close
the conversation. "You all were not sent here to establish the
location of the different parts of my anatomy, anyway."

The man appeared not to have heard me. "I'd swear," he murmured
musingly, standing back and regarding me with tilted head, "I'd swear
it was his neck if it warn't for his arms." He suddenly discontinued
his dreamy observations and became all business.

"Well, sir," he began briskly, "now that we've settled that what do
you want me to do to it?"

"Why, shave it, of course," I replied bitterly. "That's what you're
here for, isn't it? All us Show Girls have got to have our chests
shaved."

"An' after I've shaved your chest, dear," he asked in a soothing