extreme youth and nickels to spend. Up and down that street on a bright
Saturday afternoon may be seen our Middle-Western jackies chumming with
the British sailors and Tommies, or flirting with the Irish girls, or
gazing through the little panes of the show-windows, whose enterprising
proprietors have imported from the States a popular brand of chewing-gum
to make us feel more at home. In one of these shops, where I went to
choose a picture post-card, I caught sight of an artistic display of a
delicacy I had thought long obsolete--the everlasting gum-drop. But when
I produced a shilling the shopkeeper shook his head. "Sure, every day
the sailors are wanting to buy them of me, but it's for ornament I'm
keeping them," he said. "There's no more to be had till the war will be
over. Eight years they're here now, and you wouldn't get a tooth in
them, sir!" So I wandered out again, joined the admiral, and inspected
the Bluejackets' Club by the water's edge. Nothing one sees, perhaps, is
so eloquent of the change that has taken place in the life and fabric of
our navy. If you are an enlisted man, here in this commodious group of
buildings you can get a good shore meal and entertain your friends among
the Allies, you may sleep in a real bed, instead of a hammock, you may
play pool, or see a moving-picture show, or witness a vaudeville worthy
of professionals, like that recently given in honour of the visit of the
admiral of our Atlantic fleet. A band of thirty pieces furnished the
music, and in the opinion of the jackies one feature alone was lacking
to make the entertainment a complete success--the new drop-curtain had
failed to arrive from London. I happened to be present when this curtain
was first unrolled, and beheld spread out before me a most realistic
presentation of "little old New York," seen from the North River,
towering against blue American skies. And though I have never been
overfond of New York, that curtain in that place gave me a sensation!

Such is the life of our officers and sailors in these strange times that