With the Battle Fleet: Cruise of the Sixteen Battleships of the United States Atlantic Fleet from Hampton Roads to the Golden Gate, December, 1907-May, 1908Matthews, Franklin
History
With the Battle Fleet: Cruise of the Sixteen Battleships of the United States Atlantic Fleet from Hampton Roads to the Golden Gate, December, 1907-May, 1908
Matthews, Franklin
United States. Navy. Atlantic Fleet -- Cruise, 1907-1909
The luckless newspaper man who is a passenger on a warship does not
escape. He's meat for these flesh eaters. The Sun man mentioned one day
that he was sorry he had missed a certain piece of news because it was
something that would interest everybody, millions of people, in fact.
"How many millions of people, for example?" asked an innocent voice.
"Well, there are more than three millions of people in New York city
alone," was the reply. It was a mistake. Scarcely a day has passed on
the cruise when some one at the wardroom table does not say in the
proper tone of voice and just at the psychological moment:
"Three millions of people made happy!"
That moment comes often in port after some one has asked the
correspondent if he has cabled such and such a piece of news. He usually
says he has.
Up rises the table and a 12-inch roar shakes things.
"Three millions of people made happy!"
A mess attendant drops a dish and the accident starts a discussion as to
the large amount of breakage of crockery. One member who has been
afflicting the mess with the recital of numerous details of his
household affairs, having been married only a year and a half, protests
against the carelessness of mess attendants. He says it is an outrage
the way the mess crockery is broken. There is no excuse for it.
Downright carelessness it is, and something ought to be done about it
right away.
"Why," he says, "do you know that in our married life we have had just
one servant and I give you my word, she has not broken one single piece
of crockery. That's a fact."
"What do you use in your home, Jackson--agate ware?" asks a rogue across
the way, and for the rest of the meal the mess is relieved from any more
details of Jackson's domestic affairs.
Just on the edge of the Fourth Ward is a Lieutenant who has a wonderful
baby. The mess hears all about that kid whenever a fresh mail arrives.
The child must be pretty fine and the mess puts up with the narration of
his superior points and cunning ways with a kindly indulgence and
restraint. The conversation drifts one evening to the case of a seaman
who was sick all night and unable to sleep and the big doctor, as the
ranking surgeon is called, is telling about the way the man must have
suffered before he complained. The father of the baby takes the matter
up at once and says:
"Doctor, Mrs. Williams writes me that the other night the baby cried all
night long. Neither she nor the baby got a wink of sleep. What do you do
for a baby who cries all night without stopping?"
"Take it out the next morning and choke it to death," growls the doctor.
Williams is puzzled at the shout that goes up and while he is trying to
fathom its meaning the mess rises up and, pointing its collective finger
at the big doctor, hurls this shout at him:
"Cruel man! Cruel man! Cruel man!"
Williams's baby never cries all night again for that mess.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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