As if to answer this thought, he came next to the room where the work of the cadets was shown. The splicing, the foot-ball statistics, the fencing foils and masks, were welcomed; but the tables full of text-books and the neat drawings on the walls spoke so plainly of hard study and long hours of work that Harry’s determination was somewhat shaken. And, indeed, before he had left the Government Building, a soldier of the regular army, guarding some exhibits, had said to him, “The time for war is over.” The man seemed to speak seriously, and then it was that Harry recalled the new Liberty Bell and its inscription. War was not all uniforms and parading. [Illustration: THE CARAVEL “SANTA MARIA.” The Model of the Flagship of Columbus.] The captain’s room and office were most attractive, except that a set of the “Encyclopædia Britannica” seemed out of its element—a British book with a Latin name hardly rhymed with a United States man-of-war. A courteous officer on the “Illinois” told Harry that people’s questions were at times hard to answer. “One man,” he said, “looked long at the Howell torpedo, read the labels, and with keen interest wanted to know whether it wasn’t a flying machine!” Harry thought that he might have been told that it was a machine to make other machines fly; but he didn’t interrupt the officer, who gave him a clear explanation of a life-buoy hanging in the cabin. While ascending to the upper deck, he heard a woman say, “Oh, is there another story?” and wished Rudyard Kipling had been there to tell her that it was _quite_ another story. But he made his way to the conning-tower, paying heed to the admonition of a mischievous boy who said, “Push, but don’t shove.” The conning-tower was hardly big enough to lose one’s temper in, but gave the commanding officer full view of his surroundings through tiny slits cut through the solid steel. Electric buttons were convenient to push when he wished the guns, rifles, torpedoes, and other assistants to do the rest. Leaving the vessel, Harry was again launched back to the other end of the grounds, landing at the Agricultural Building. He passed through this great show-house with his eyes well restrained, but did notice some birds flying about under the lofty roof. He wondered if they had come to study the best methods of securing a living at the farmers’ expense, and hoped rather that they wished to know what harmful insects it was best for them to destroy.