Each remaining hour of the day has its allotted duty, but every marine with a clean record has twenty hours out of every forty-eight to himself. Many of the marines stationed at the Brooklyn yard spend their idle hours in the library, a light, airy room on the second floor of the barracks, furnished with a goodly collection of books and with a number of the weekly and monthly magazines. But as to the books, some of the most assiduous readers know the contents of them all, and long for more. Nor need the private of marines end his life in the ranks unless he be so minded. A school is provided for him where, if he elects to do so, he may conquer fractions and cube root, and in time, after his studies have raised him to the grade of sergeant-major in the ranks, should there chance to come a war the line is open to him, and once his ivory-hilted officer's sword and gold lace are worn he has the entree to any officers' mess and a place that no man but one of his own line can fill. That the men in the ranks who choose to employ their leisure hours in study get their reward was proven in the war with Spain, which raised no less than thirty sergeant-majors to the dignity of shoulder straps. The dominant desire of the ambitious young marine is, of course, to get to sea. The work there is harder than in the barracks, but he does not consider that when he thinks of life afloat and the foreign ports to which it will take him. During his five years' enlistment in the corps each capable marine makes two sea voyages, extending over a period of three years. On shipboard the shore drills are continued as far as practicable and to them, as already hinted, is added target practice. His time off duty the marine spends in the forecastle and amidships reading, sleeping, writing up his diary or twanging the strings of his favorite instrument, the guitar. The things which chiefly occupy his thoughts, however, are rations and going ashore. As to the former, they are considerably better than he gets at the barracks and may be augmented from the bumboats--a genuine boon to the luxury-loving marines. These bumboats approach the men-of-war at every port with articles of utility and food in great profusion, and the American marine has a worldwide reputation among their proprietors for his generosity. Ah Sam, of the port of Hong Kong, the greatest man in the world in his line, whose boats are fifty and sixty ton junks, is said to have made his fortune from sales to American men-of-war. At any rate, when one enters or leaves the harbor he fires a salute of twenty-one guns.