ence--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 bre