"Will you let us wish on you?" they'd cry. Of course we let them. I only hope their wishes came true. But, say, night in London is one great party. It gets dusk, and, if you're on to what you are in for, you make a bee-line for where you are going, before the light fades entirely--or you don't get there. We didn't know that, so we planned to go to the Hippodrome; but we waited until dark. Say, talk about pitch black! It's pale beside London at night! Imagine Broadway with not a single light--not even a pale glimmer. Imagine it filled with thousands and thousands of people, bumping into each other--talking, laughing, whispering. No wagons or street-cars--nothing on wheels, except an ambulance, which crawls about with weird blue lights, very dim. Just crowds and crowds, knocking your hat off, stepping on your feet, taking your arm by mistake. Men apologizing. Girls giggling. Voices coming from nowhere. Forms brushing by and vanishing. The streets are full. I think every last person in London must turn out after dark. It is one big adventure. You never forget it. You don't know where you are or where you are going--no one seems to. When you get tired you stop someone and ask the way to a rooming house. If they know they lead you along. You feel a door. You open it and close it cautiously behind yourself. You are in a dark vestibule. You cross a black hall groping before you. Suddenly your hand touches two curtains drawn close. You part them. Beyond is light at last. You enter the living-room of the house. Someone quietly draws the curtains so no faintest glimmer will penetrate the outer darkness. Say, it was some experience! Next day a gentleman in a big motor picked us up, five of us, and showed us the sights. He wouldn't tell us who he was, but he was a big bug all right. All the bobbies came to a crack salute as he passed by, and he took us through Parliament and to Buckingham Palace. We couldn't find out his name. All he confessed to was that he sat in the House of Lords; so I asked him about the family estate. He knew all the facts but said none of the crowd were in London just then. I thought of looking them up, but I didn't get a chance. That night we took in the Hippodrome. It was all right, but it made us homesick for the one on Forty-fourth Street. When we got back to the ship next day we found we were going home to the U. S. A. That was the best news I ever heard. We came back in sixteen days. Say, do I want to go over again? Well, rather! And I'll take a longer shore leave next time. Perhaps I'll run up to Northumberland and look over the old place. After all, seventeenth isn't so far down the line, now is it? CAPTAIN BARCLAY OF THE MARINE CORPS SPEAKS: "THE LEATHER NECKS"