Besides the receiving ships regularly devoted to the enlistment of naval recruits on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts American warships are constantly shipping men, both in home and foreign ports, to fill gaps in crews. In this way many peculiar geniuses, men of really remarkable attainments along certain lines, gain admission into the navy as enlisted men. At Bangkok a few years ago an American man-of-war shipped a German as a messroom attendant. He was a fine-looking man of thirty and had little to say to his mates. One morning at sea soon after the German's enlistment a knot of officers gathered in the wardroom were discussing a difficult point in ordnance. The messroom attendant, who was watching out for the officers' needs, ventured to enter into the discussion. He did it, however, so quietly and respectfully and at once showed such perfect knowledge of the topic in hand that the officers found themselves listening to him with much interest. In five minutes the German had shown that there was no detail of the armament of the world's navies with which he was not familiar and that he was a past master in all matters pertaining to modern great guns. His proficiency in this respect being reported to the commanding officer, he was made a chief gunner's mate and was about to be a gunner when his time expired and he went to Germany, where he was employed by the Krupps as an ordnance expert. It came out that he had spent his life in the ordnance branch of the Krupp works and that he had been compelled to leave Germany suddenly on account of some trouble in which he had become involved. He had gone to Siam in the hope of getting an opportunity to rearrange the Siamese fortifications. Failing in this, and discouraged and penniless, he had shipped in the American navy. "Once a sailor always a sailor" is not strictly true of men-of-warsmen of the American navy. Less than one-half of the men who complete one enlistment ship for a second three years' cruise, but a majority of the men who put in two cruises settle down to a lifelong continuance in the service, for when a bluejacket has passed one or two summers in the latitude of the North Cape and a couple of winters among the West Indies or in the South Pacific he is pretty sure to acquire a dislike for the climate of the United States that keeps him in the navy for good and all. Moreover, after a few years in the navy a bluejacket becomes possessed of the idea that he is really doing nothing aboard ship to earn his $16 a month and board.