“Sweetheart,” said the director, addressing me personally, “you’re not dancing.  You’re swimming, that’s what you’re doing.  As a Persian girl you would make a first class squaw.”  He halted for a moment and then bawled out in a great voice, “Understudy!” and I was removed from the stage in a fainting condition.  This evening I was shipped back to camp a thoroughly discredited Show Girl.  I had labored long in vicious, soul-squelching corsets and like Samson been shorn of my locks, and here I am after all my sacrifices relegated back to the scrap heap.  Why am I always the unfortunate one?  I must have a private plot in the sky strewn with unlucky stars.  Camp routine after the free life of the stage is unbearably irksome.  My particular jimmy legs was so glad to see me back that he almost cried as he thrust a broom and a swab into my hands.

“Bear a hand,” he said gleefully, “get to work and stick to it.  We’re short of men,” he added, “and there is no end of things for you to do.”

I did them all and he was right.  There surely is no end to the things he can devise for me to do.  I long for the glamour and footlights of the gay white way, but I have been cast out and rejected as many a Show Girl has been before me.

June 1st. The morning papers say all sort of nice things about Biff-Bang but I can hardly believe them sincere after the treatment I received.  I know for a fact that the man who took my place was knock-kneed and that the rest of his figure could not hold a candle to mine.

I still feel convinced that Biff-Bang lost one of its most prepossessing and talented artists when I was so unceremoniously removed from the chorus.

June 10th. I was standing doing harm to no one in a vague, rather unfortunate way I have, when all of a sudden, without word or warning, a very competent looking sailor seized me by the shoulders and, thrusting his face close to mine, cried out: 

“Do you want to make a name for yourself in the service?”

I left the ground two feet below me in my fright and when I alighted there were tears of eagerness in my eyes.

“Yes,” I replied breathlessly, “oh, sir, yes.”

“Then pick up that,” he cried dramatically, pointing to a cigar butt on the parade ground.  I didn’t wait for the laughter.  I didn’t have to.  It was forthcoming immediately.  Huge peals of it.  Sailors are a very low tribe of vertebrate.  They seem to hang around most of the time waiting for something to laugh at—­usually me.  It is my belief that I have been the subject of more mirth since I came to camp than any other man on the station.  Whatever I do I seem to do it too much or too little.  There even seems to be something mirth-provoking in my personal appearance, which I have always regarded hitherto not without a certain shade of satisfaction.  Only the other day I caught the eyes of 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 laugh forced itself through his lips.