Lovesick members of the mess get it unmercifully, but when the glasses come on the table at dinner some evening and the lovelorn man smiles and announces his marriage engagement, hearty, indeed, are the congratulations and the girl's health is drunk with gusto. Let some member have a birthday. Again good wishes predominate. All hands make speeches. Poems are presented. Hits and grinds are got off. It all goes to make the men of the mess forget that they are made of human clay, the kind that grows brittle and crumbles upon close contact.
Various expedients for making social life delightful are tried. Take the Kansas, for instance. Go over to dinner there some night and you will find the usual good natured raillery going on all the time, but at the end of nearly every course some one will get up and go to the piano and sing a song, a good one, too. They have half a dozen singers on that ship, and you can scarcely spend a more delightful evening anywhere. Perhaps they have invited Father Gleeson of the Connecticut over, and after suitable urging this accomplished chaplain priest will tell some Irish stories or will sing "The Wearin' o' the Green" for you. And then the ordnance officer will probably step up and sing some rare English ballads, and you make him sing half a dozen times that old gypsy song "Dip Your Fingers in the Stew."
Perhaps you go to the Minnesota. That ship has the prize runners. They do josh a man for certain. There's Henry Ball, for instance, only that isn't his name. Down at one corner some man will cry out:
"Who killed Cock Robin?"
At the far end another will respond:
"'I,' said the sparrow."
In the middle will come a voice:
"'With my bow and arrow.'"
And down and around will go the details of the dreadful tragedy of the death of Cock Robin. It's a mournful tale, but as the details are set forth loudly there comes a twinkle in the eyes of certain men, and then after Cock Robin is buried decently a shout will come:
"Who knows it all?"