On guest-nights your friend sits beside yourself, of course, and you attend to his corporeal wants. One of the nicest things about the service, in my opinion, is the having the band every day at dinner; then too everything is so orderly; with our president and vice-president, it is quite like a pleasure party every evening; so that altogether the dinner, while in harbour, comes to be the great event of the day. And after the cloth has been removed, and the president, with a preliminary rap on the table to draw attention, has given the only toast of the evening, the Queen, and due honour has been paid thereto, and the bandmaster, who has been keeking in at the door every minute for the last ten, that he might not make a mistake in the time, has played "God save the Queen," and returned again to waltzes, quadrilles, or selections from operas,--then it is very pleasant and delightful to loll over our walnuts and wine, and half-dream away the half-hour till coffee is served. Then, to be sure, that little cigar in our canvas smoking-room outside the wardroom door, though the last, is by no means the least pleasant part of the _dejeuner_. For my own part, I enjoy the succeeding hour or so as much as any: when, reclining in an easy chair, in a quiet corner, I can sip my tea, and enjoy my favourite author to my heart's content. You must spare half an hour, however, to pay your last visit to the sick; but this will only tend to make you appreciate your ease all the more when you have done. So the evening wears away, and by ten o'clock you will probably just be sufficiently tired to enjoy thoroughly your little swing-cot and your cool white sheets. At sea, luncheon, or tiffin, is dispensed with, and you dine at half-past two. Not much difference in the quality of viands after all, for now-a-days everything worth eating can be procured, in hermetically sealed tins, capable of remaining fresh for any length of time. There is one little bit of the routine of the service, which at first one may consider a hardship.