Biltmore Oswald Read online

forthcoming immediately. Huge peals of it. Sailors are avery low tribe of vertebrate. They seem to hang around most of thetime waiting for something to laugh at--usually me. It is my beliefthat I have been the subject of more mirth since I came to camp thanany other man on the station. Whatever I do I seem to do it too muchor too little. There even seems to be something mirth-provoking in mypersonal appearance, which I have always regarded hitherto not withouta certain shade of satisfaction. Only the other day I caught the eyesof the gloomiest sailor in camp studying me with a puzzled expression.He gazed at me for such a long time that I became quite disconcerted.Slowly a smile spread over his face, then a strange, rusty laughforced itself through his lips.

  "Doggone if I can solve it," he chuckled, turning away and shaking hishead; "it's just simply too much for me."

  He looked back once, clapped his hands over his mouth and proceededmerrily on his way. I am glad of course to be able to bring joy intothe lives of sailors, but I did not enlist for that sole purpose.Returning to the cigar butt, however, I was really quite disappointed.I do so want to make a name for myself in the service that I wouldeagerly jump at the chance of sailing up the Kiel canal in a BarnegatSneak Box were it not for the fact that sailing always makes medeathly sick. I don't know why it is, but the more I have to do withwater the more reasons I find for shunning it. The cigar butt episodebroke my heart though. I was all keyed up for some heroic deed--whatan anti-climax! I left the spot in a bitter, humiliated mood. There isonly one comforting part about the whole affair--I did not pick upthat cigar butt. He did, I'll bet, though when nobody was looking. Idon't know as I blame him--there were still several healthy drags leftin it.

  _June 11th._ This war is going to put a lot of Chinamen out ofbusiness if it keeps up much longer. The first thing a sailor will doafter he has been paid off will be to establish a laundry, and hewon't be a slouch at the business at that. I feel sure that I amqualified right now to take in family laundry and before the end ofsummer I guess I'll be able to do fancy work. At present I am whatyou might call a first class laundryman, but I'm not a fancylaundryman yet. Since they've put us in whites I go around with thewasher-woman's complaint most of the time. Terrible shooting pains inmy back! My sympathy for the downtrodden is increasing by leaps andbounds. I can picture myself without any effort of the imaginationbending over a tub after the war doing the family washing while mywife is out running for alderman or pulling the wires to be appointedCommissioner of the Docks. The white clothes situation, however, isserious. It seems that every spare moment I have I am either washingor thinking of washing or just after having washed, and to one whopossesses as I do the uncanny faculty of being able to get dirtier inmore places in the shortest space of time than any ten street childrenpicked at random could ever equal, life presents one long vista ofsoap and suds.

  "THIS WAR IS GOING TO PUT A LOT OF CHINAMEN OUT OFBUSINESS"]

  "You boys look so cute in your funny white uniforms," a girl said tome the other day. "It must be so jolly wearing them."

  I didn't strike her, for she was easily ten pounds heavier than I was,but I made it easily apparent that our relations would never progressfurther than the weather vane. I used to affect white pajamas, thesame seeming to harmonize with the natural purity of my nature, butafter the war I fear I shall be forced to discontinue the practise infavor of more lurid attire. However, I still believe that a bachelorshould never wear anything other than white pajamas or at the mostlavender, but this of course is merely a personal opinion.

  _June 14th._ I have been hard put to-day. The Lord only knows whattrials and tribulations will be visited upon me next. At present I amquite unnerved. To-day I was initiated into all the horrifying secretsand possibilities of the bayonet, European style. Never do I rememberspending a more unpleasant half an hour. The instructor was aresourceful man possessed of a most vivid imagination. Before he hadfinished with us potential delicatessen dealers were lying around asthick as flies. We were brushing them off.

  After several hair-raising exhibitions he formed us into two linesfacing each other and told us to begin.

  "Now lunge," he said, "and look as if you meant business."

  I glanced ingratiatingly across at my adversary. He was simply glaringat me. Never have I seen an expression of greater ferocity. It was toomuch. I knew for certain that if he ever lunged at me I'd never liveto draw another yellow slip.

  "Mister Officer," I gasped, pointing across at this blood-thirsty man,"don't you think that he's just a little too close? I'm afraid I mighthurt him by accident."

  The officer surveyed the situation with a swift, practical eye.

  "Oh, I guess he can take care of himself all right," he replied. Thatwas just what I feared.

  The man smiled grimly.

  "But does he know that this is only practise?" I continued. "Hecertainly doesn't look as if he did."

  "That's the way you should look," said the officer, "work your ownface up a bit. This isn't a vampire scene. Don't look as if you weregoing to lure him. Y'know you're supposed to be angry with youropponent when you meet him in battle, quite put out in fact. Andfurthermore you're supposed to look it."

  I regarded my opponent, but only terror was written on my face. Thensuddenly we lunged and either through fear or mismanagement Isucceeded only in running my bayonet deep into the ground. In somestrange manner the butt of the gun jabbed me in the stomach and I wascompletely winded. My opponent was dancing and darting around me likea local but thorough-going lightning storm. I abandoned my gun andstood sideways, thus decreasing the possible area of danger. Had theexercises continued much longer I would have had a spell of something,probably the blind staggers.

  "I STOOD SIDE-WAYS, THUS DECREASING THE POSSIBLE AREAOF DANGER"]

  "You're not pole vaulting," said the instructor to me, as he returnedthe gun. "In a real show you'd have looked like a pin cushion by thistime." I felt like one.

  Then it all started over again and this time I thought I was doing alittle better, when quite unexpectedly the instructor shouted at me.

  "Stop prancing around in that silly manner," he cried, "you're notdoing a sword dance, sonny."

  "He thinks he's still a show girl," some one chuckled, "he's thatseductive."

  Mess gear interrupted our happy morning. The sight of a knife fairlysickened me.

  _June 24th._ Last week I caught a liberty--a perfect Forty-three--andwent to spend it with some cliff dwelling friends of mine who, heavenhelp their wretched lot! lived on the sixth and top floor of one ofthose famous New York struggle-ups. Before shoving off there was someslight misunderstanding between the inspecting officer and myselfrelative to the exact color of my, broadly speaking, Whites.

  "Fall out, there," he said to me. "You can't go out on liberty inBlues."

  "But these, sir," I responded huskily, "are not Blues; they'reWhites."

  "Look like Blues to me," he said skeptically. "Fall out anyway. You'retoo dirty."

  For the first time in my life I said nothing at the right time. I justlooked at him. There was a dumb misery in my eyes, a mute, humbleappeal such as is practised with so much success by dogs. He couldn'tresist it. Probably he was thinking of the days when he, too, stood inline waiting impatiently for the final formalities to be run throughbefore the world was his again.

  "Turn around," he said brokenly. I did so.

  "Fall in," he ordered, after having made a prolonged inspection of myshrinking back. "I guess you'll do, but you are only getting throughon a technicality--there's one white spot under your collar."

  Officers are people after all, although sometimes it's hard to realizeit. This one, in imagination, I anointed with oil and rare perfumes,and costly gifts I laid at his feet, while in a glad voice I calleddown the blessings of John Paul Jones upon his excellent head. Thus Ideparted with my kind and never did the odor of gasoline smell sweeterin my nose than did the fumes that were being emitted by the impatientflivver that waited without the gate. And sweet, too, was the fetidatmosphere o
f the subway after the clean, bracing air of Pelham,sweet was the smell of garlic belonging to a mustache that sat besideme, and sweet were the buttery fingers of a small child who keptclawing at me while their owner demanded of the whole car if I was a"weal mavy sailor boy?" I didn't look it, and I didn't feel it, but Ihad forty-three hours of freedom ahead of me, so what did I care?

  All went well with me until I essayed the six flight climb-up to thecave of these cliff-dwelling people, when I found that the one-storiedexistence I had been leading in the Pelham bungalows had completelyunfitted me for mountain climbing. As I toiled upward I wondered dimlyhow these people ever