Poignantly suggestive of the things of bygone college days was the change which came over the spirit of the scene when an exuberant young sub-lieutenant began doing stunts by trying to climb round a service chair without touching the deck. His inevitable fall upset the tilted chair of a visiting "snotty," who was playing his mandolin, and an instant later the two were rolling in a close embrace. Suddenly some one shouted "scrum!" and with an impetuous rush the singers ranged themselves into two rival "Rugger" teams, each trying to push the other against the wall. Twitching at the stir of long dormant impulses, I restrained myself with an effort from mixing in the joyous mêlée, and maintained my dignity as a newly arrived visitor by backing into a corner and erecting a sofa barricade against the swirling human tide. "Shades of Stanford and old Encina Hall" (I found myself gasping), "it's a 'rough-house,' a real college 'rough-house.'" While it lasted that "scrum" had all the fierce abandon of a Freshman-Sophomore "cane rush," but even at its very climax (when it had upset the electric heater and was threatening to engulf the coal stove) there was a differentiation. One sensed rather than saw the thread of control restraining it, and knew that every pushing, laughing player of the game was subconsciously alert for a signal that would send him, tense and ready, to the performance of those complexly simple duties training for which he had given the best part of his life. "Rugger" gave place to "chair polo," and that highly diverting sport in turn to comparatively "formal" bouts of wrestling and feats of strength and agility. It was while a row of shirt-sleeved figures were at the height of a "bat" competition (which consisted of seeing which one could hang the longest by his toes from a steel beam of the ceiling) that the Fleet Surgeon edged gingerly in behind my barrier and remarked that it was "funny to think how that up-ended line of young fighting cocks might be tumbling from their roost to go to action stations at the next tick of the clock. And they'd fight just like they play," he went on, fingering a sprained wrist that was proffered for diagnosis. "We've not a single case of any kind in the hospital to-day, and the men are just as healthy in mind as they are in body. It's half the battle, let me tell you, to live in a happy ship."