reatly 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