March 16th. Life in the Navy is just one round of engagements to keep.  Simply splendid!  All we have to do is to get up at 6 o’clock in the morning when it is nice and dark and play around with the cutest little hammock imaginable.  When you have arrived at the most interesting part of this game, the four hitch period, and you are wondering whether you are going to beat your previous record and get six instead of five, the bugle blows and immediately throws you into a state of great indecision.  The problem is whether to finish the hammock and be reported late for muster or to attend muster and be reported for not having finished your hammock.  The time spent in considering this problem usually results in your trying to do both and in failing to accomplish either, getting reported on two counts.  Any enlisted man is entitled to play this game and he is sure of making a score.  After running around innumerable miles of early morning camp scenery and losing several buttons from your new trousers, you come back and do Greek dances for a man who aspires to become a second Mordkin or a Mr. Isadora Duncan.  This is all very sweet and I am sure the boys play prettily together.  First he dances, then we dance; then he interprets a bird and we all flutter back at him.  This being done to his apparent satisfaction, we proceed to crawl and grind and weave and wave in a most extraordinary manner.  This is designed to give us physical poise to enable us to go aloft in a graceful and pleasing manner.  After this dancing in the dew you return for a few more rounds with your hammock, clean up your bay and stand in line for breakfast.  After breakfast we muster again and a gentleman talks to us in a voice that would lead you to believe that he thought we were all in hiding somewhere in New Rochelle.  Then there are any number of things to do to divert our minds—­scrub hammocks, pick up cigarettes, drill, hike and attend lectures.  As a rule we do all of these things.  From 5 p.m. until 8:45 p.m. if we are unfortunate enough not to have a lecture party we are free to give ourselves over to the riotous joy of the moment, which consists of listening to a phonograph swear bitterly at a piano long past its prime.  The final act of the drama of the day is performed on the hammock—­an animated little sketch of arms and legs conducted along the lines of Houdini getting into a strait-jacket, or does he get out of them?  I don’t know, perhaps both.  Anyway, you get what I mean.

[Illustration:  “THIS IS DESIGNED TO GIVE US PHYSICAL POISE”]

March 17th. This spring weather is bringing the birds out in great quantities.  They bloomed along the fence today like a Ziegfeld chorus on an outing.  One girl carried on a coherent conversation with six different fellows at once and left each of them feeling that he alone had been singled out for her particular favor.  As a matter of fact I was flirting with her all the time and I could tell by