lot of Chinamen out of
business if it keeps up much longer. The first thing a sailor will do
after he has been paid off will be to establish a laundry, and he
won't be a slouch at the business at that. I feel sure that I am
qualified right now to take in family laundry and before the end of
summer I guess I'll be able to do fancy work. At present I am what
you might call a first class laundryman, but I'm not a fancy
laundryman yet. Since they've put us in whites I go around with the
washer-woman's complaint most of the time. Terrible shooting pains in
my back! My sympathy for the downtrodden is increasing by leaps and
bounds. I can picture myself without any effort of the imagination
bending over a tub after the war doing the family washing while my
wife is out running for alderman or pulling the wires to be appointed
Commissioner of the Docks. The white clothes situation, however, is
serious. It seems that every spare moment I have I am either washing
or thinking of washing or just after having washed, and to one who
possesses as I do the uncanny faculty of being able to get dirtier in
more places in the shortest space of time than any ten street children
picked at random could ever equal, life presents one long vista of
soap and suds.

[Illustration: "THIS WAR IS GOING TO PUT A LOT OF CHINAMEN OUT OF
BUSINESS"]

"You boys look so cute in your funny white uniforms," a girl said to
me 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 progress
further than the weather vane. I used to affect white pajamas, the
same seeming to harmonize with the natural purity of my nature, but
after the war I fear I shall be forced to discontinue the practise in
favor of more lurid attire. However, I still believe that a bachelor
should never wear anything other than white pajamas or at the most
lavender, but this of course is merely a personal opinion.

_June 14th._ I have been hard put to-day. The Lord only knows what
trials and tribulations will be visited upon me next. At present I am
quite unnerved. To-day I was initiated into all the horrifying secrets
and possibilities of the bayonet, European style. Never do I remember
spending a more unpleasant half an hour. The instructor was a
resourceful man possessed of a most vivid imagination. Before he had
finished with us potential delicatessen deal