Great shout:
What! Highballs roll on de groun'.
Melody:
Yas, highballs roll on de groun'.
The merriment on the Louisiana was not exceptional. It was a mere copy of what was going on in sixteen wardrooms. Every ship was sure it had the merriest dinner and the merriest time all around in the fleet, and that was true strictly.
The bluejackets had their own fun, and they yielded to none in their belief that they had the best time of all. Of course they were right. Look at this menu that Uncle Sam provided for their dinner:
| Cream of Celery Soup | ||
| Roast Turkey | ||
| Roast Ham | ||
| Sage Dressing | Giblet Gravy | |
| Cranberry Sauce | ||
| Mashed Potatoes | Lima Beans | |
| Peach Pie | ||
| Mixed Nuts | Raisins | |
| Coffee. |
And here is the music that Bandmaster Cariana provided:
| 1 March | "The Man Behind the Gun" | Sousa |
| 2 Overture | "The Bridal Rose" | Lavaller |
| 3 Waltz | "I See Thee Again" | Estrada |
| 4 Selection | "Woodland" | Luders |
| 5 Habanera | "Escamilla" | Redla |
| Star Spangled Banner. |
And didn't the first class men have liberty to go ashore? Didn't they come back loaded down with souvenir postal cards, baskets of fruit, parrots and monkeys? And wasn't every man of them able to toe a seam as he answered to his name on the liberty list? If there was a suspicion of a rolling gait in two or three couldn't they lay it to the heat? Certain it was that not one of them had drunk any of that stuff down here that they call biograph whiskey, the kind that makes you see moving pictures, for the only moving pictures that any of them saw that night were the dozen sparring matches and two wrestling contests on the quarter deck, where the bluejackets were piled high on high under the awning clear up over the turret to the after bridge—as packed a house for the space as Caruso ever sang to.