ding to the stoker. "Is that their foghorn I've heerd
about?"

"They don't need no foghorns on warships. I jedge it's a shootin'-iron
of some kind or other, maybe a gattlin' gun what jest blows the shot
out. You see it's pointin' out like at an enemy."

An elderly woman stepped up to the Lieutenant and said: "I'd like mighty
well to see some of the Gatling guns."

"Yes, ma'am, you will find them at the foretop."

"How's that?"

"At the turret in the fore-top."

[Illustration: "MAYBE ITS A FOG HORN, OR A GATLING GUN."]

"Do you mean up in the little round cupola?"

"Cupola, great heavens," murmured the officer under his breath. Then he
called a marine and had him show the woman to the fore-top. It is the
experience of a lifetime for a naval officer who has cruised in the
Mediterranean and rocked over the high waves of the south Atlantic to be
placed in command of a brick battleship, which rests peacefully
alongside a little pier and is boarded by hundreds of reckless
sight-seers every day. The conning towers are of sheet-iron and some of
the formidable guns are simply painted wood. It is said that if anything
larger than a six-inch gun should be fired from the deck of the mimic
battleship the recoil would upset the masonry and jolt the whole
structure into a shapeless mass.

Below the water line the Illinois is a hollow mockery, but the two
decks, the turrets and the heavy battery are made so realistic that any
one who had not seen the brick laid and the plating put on might suppose
it was a real war vessel that had stranded well in toward the beach. As
a matter of fact, about one-third of the visitors are deceived, which
fact may be vouched for by any one of the marines parading the deck. A
man who looked as though he read the newspapers, called a sergeant of
marines "Cap," and remarked that it was a very fine vessel.

"Yes, indeed, sir," replied the sergeant.

"She'll be here all summer, will she?"

"Oh, yes."

"Did this boat take part in the review at New York?"

"No, sir; this battleship is stuck fast here. It is a shell of brick,
built up from a stone foundation, and is intended to represent a model
battleship."

"You don't tell me. Made of brick, eh?" Uncle, listening to the talk,
shared the countryman's disgust.

"There, Fanny, how do you excuse them for that piece of mockery?
Everybody getting fooled as if they were in a cheap dime show. It's too
bad the government should be a partner to sich