I didn’t know, since these times did not distinguish themselves in my mind from any other times. But the Nantucket Lightship was a reference I understood. We were sailing for New York. As an American I was therefore on my way home, though no spot on the continent put forth a special claim on me. I made brief experiments in various directions: New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Denver, Seattle. Nothing responded. The hills of New England, the mountains of California, the levees of Louisiana were alike easy for me to recall; but I was as detached from them as a spirit from another world. These ideas floated—I choose the phrase as expressive of something more nebulous than active thinking—these ideas floated across my brain as I watched the boy rinse his tooth-brush, replace the tumbler, and feel along the wall for the flannel shirt hanging on a peg. He turned to me then with the twinkling, doggy look I was beginning to notice as a trait. "Say, you’d eat a whale, wouldn’t you? Haven’t had a meal since Tuesday night, and now it’s Friday. Any one would think you were up in the Ypres region before the eats got on to the time-table. Pretty good grub on board this old French tub, if you holler loud enough." While he went on to suggest a menu for my breakfast I endeavored to deal with the new hints he had thrown out. He had spoken of Ypres. He had referred to short rations. I remembered that there was a war. Whether it was over, or whether it was going on, or whether I had taken part in it or not, I couldn’t say; but I knew there had been, and perhaps that there still was, a war. I tested myself as to that while I watched him button his collar and put on his tie; but all I drew forth was a sickening sense of noise, mutilation, and dirt, which might have been no more than the reaction from things I had read. Nothing personal to myself entered into these associations; no scene of horror that I could construct took me in as an actor. My light-hearted companion would not, however, allow me to follow my own train of thought. "Say," he laughed, "I know your name, but I don’t believe you know mine." The laugh grew forced and embarrassed. "I’ve got the darnedest name for kidding a guy ever got stuck on him. Sometimes it makes me mad, and I think I’ll go to law and change it; and more times I get used to it, till some smart Aleck breezes in and begins to hang it all over me again. What do you think it is? Give a guess now." He said he knew my name—and I didn’t know it myself! That was the first of my queer discoveries that appalled me. If I didn’t know my own name ... But the boy laughed on. "Give a guess now," he coaxed, buttoning up his waistcoat. "I’ll give you two; but they must be awful funny ones." Nothing funnier than Smith and Jones having occurred to me, he burst out with: