A news bulletin, published every morning, sometimes in English and sometimes in French, keeps us right up to date on thrilling events, thrillingly spelled. I have copied a sample: _It is now the tim for the final invaseon of the west by the eastren american league teams and before this clash is over it will be definitively known wether the two sox teams are to fight it out in a nip and tuk finish or wether the Chicago sox will have a comfortable margen to insure a world series betwean the two largest American citys Chicago and New York._ The French news deals exclusively with the developments in the world series Over There, which is, perhaps, almost as important. A new acquaintance made to-day was that of the Gentleman from Louisiana. He introduced himself to scold me and another guy for not taking sufficient exercise. We told him we found little pleasure in promenading the deck. “That’s unnecessary,” he said. “Get yourselves a pair of three-pound dumb-bells and use them a certain length of time every day.” So we are constantly on the lookout for a dumb-bell shop, but there seems to be a regrettable lack of such establishments in mid-ocean. The Gentleman from Louisiana says he is going to join the Foreign Legion if they’ll take him. He is only seventy years old. “But age makes no difference to a man like I,” says he. “I exercise and keep hard. All my friends are hard and tough. Why, one of my friends, an undertaker, always carries a razor in his boot.” Presumably this bird never allows psychological depression in his business. The Gentleman from Louisiana continues: “I’ve got a reputation for hardness, but I’m only hard when I know I’m right. I used such hard language once that they injected me from a committee. I was state senator then. But in all the time I held office I never talked more than two minutes.” We expressed polite regret that he was not a state senator still. And we asked him to have a lemonade. “No, thank you. Even the softest drinks have a peculiar effect on me. They make my toes stick together.” We guaranteed to pry those members apart again after he had quenched his thirst, but he would not take a chance. On the way cabinward from this fascinating presence, I was invited into a crap game on the salle à manger floor. The gentleman with the dice tossed a hundred-franc note into the ring and said: “Shoot it all.” And the amount was promptly oversubscribed. So I kept on going cabinward. _Samedi, 11 Août._ The man back there in the steamship office can no more truthfully say: “There has never been an accident on this line.”