"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.