The first-class cabins were occupied by several hundred officers, a curious mixture of men, some returning on leave or to become instructors in the officers’ camps, or being mustered out of service, either for ill health, drunkenness, or incompetence. For days I was pursued, even into my cabin, by a man from a Western city who had enlisted as a dentist. He was evidently out of his mind and was to be mustered out of the service on his return home. He had conceived the mysterious idea that I could influence the powers that be to have him reinstated, and I finally found the glitter in his eye so ominous that I reported him to the colonel in command and he promptly had him put under medical observation. Two days later his companions in the hospital ward, whom he had already annoyed and frightened by suddenly grabbing their legs at night, found him in the bathroom with his throat partly cut by his razor; and I confess that I was glad when I heard that he had been put into a cabin by himself, with a soldier guarding the door. We were, of course, under army regulations and in many respects life was much stricter than on the passenger liners. We were compelled to wear life-preservers almost the entire voyage and no lights were permitted after sundown. We were not told at which American port we were to land, and I was much astonished one morning to find our ship anchored in Boston Harbor alongside the old 1812 frigate _Constitution_, whose broadside-guns looked delightfully picturesque and inefficient compared with the modern monsters I had seen in France.