"There was a public library on board paid for by Government and entrusted to the custody of one of the marine corporals, a little, dried up man of a somewhat literary turn. He had once been a clerk in a post office ashore, and having been long accustomed to hand over letters when called for he was now just the man to hand over books. He kept them in a large cask on the berth deck, and when seeking a particular volume had to capsize it like a barrel of potatoes. This made him very cross and irritable, as most all librarians are. Who had the selection of these books I do not know, but some of them must have been selected by our chaplain, who so pranced on Coleridge's 'High German Horse.'" "Mason Good's 'Book of Nature,' a very good book, to be sure, but not precisely adapted to literary tastes, was one of these volumes; and Macchiavelli's 'Art of War,' which was very dry fighting; and a folio of Tillotson's sermons, the best of reading for divines indeed, but with little relish for a main top man; and Locke's Essays, incomparable essays, everybody knows, but miserable reading at sea; and Plutarch's Lives--superexcellent biographies, which pit Greek against Roman in beautiful style, but then, in a sailor's estimation, not to be mentioned with the lives of the Admirals; and Blair's Lectures, University Edition, a fine treatise on rhetoric, but having nothing to say about nautical phrases, such as 'splicing the main brace,' 'passing a gammoning,' 'puddin'ing the dolphin,' and 'making a carrick-bend,' besides numerous invaluable but unreadable tomes that might have been purchased cheap at the auction of some college professor's library." The sailorman has lots of recreation nowadays. Three times a week, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday nights, the band plays for him on the fo'c's'le deck. He seizes his mate and he dances wildly, madly or slowly and gracefully, as he pleases. You see as fine dancing there as you can see in a fashionable ballroom in any capital of the world. He has his cards, his pets--dogs, cats, birds--and he foregathers from time to time to sing. He likes to box and play baseball and to row, and the Government provides for suitable athletic equipment for his sports. He loves a boxing contest on the quarter deck with all the officers looking on and the rules of the ring enforced rigidly. It gladdens his heart to applaud and to hear others applaud, and he was much rejoiced in Callao when several Peruvians who were the guests of the New Jersey's wardroom at a boxing contest, sang out in their delight: "Viva la box fight!"