* * * * *

One day my friend the barber called me aside: 

“Say, kid, I’ve been delegated to tell you that you’ve got lice.”  I flamed indignant.

“That’s a God-damned lie! and whoever told you so is a God-damned liar, too!  I never had a louse in my life.”

“Easy!  Easy!... no use gittin’ huffy ... if it ain’t lice you got, wot you scratchin’ all the time fer?  Look in the crotch of yer pants and the seams of your shirt, an’ see!”

I had been scratching a lot ... and wondering what was wrong ... my breast was all red ... but I had explained it to myself that I was wearing a coarse woolen undershirt next my skin ... that I had picked up from the slop-chest, also.

The barber walked jauntily away, leaving me standing sullenly alone.

I sneaked into the toilet, looking to see if anyone was about.  I turned my shirt back.  To my horror, my loathing,—­the soldier’s accusation was true!... they were so thick, thanks to my ignorant neglect, that I could see them moving in battalions ... if I had been the victim of some filthy disease, I could scarcely have felt more beyond the pale, more a pariah.  I had not detected them before, because I was ignorant of the thought of having them, and because their grey colour was exactly that of the inside of my woolen shirt.

I threw the shirt away, content to shiver for a few days till we had steamed to warmer weather ...  I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed myself....  I had, up to now, had experience with head-lice only ... as a child, in school....

I look back with a shudder even yet to that experience.  During my subsequent tramp-career I never could grow callous to vermin, as a few others that I met, did.  Once I met a tramp who advised me not to bother about ’em ... and you would soon get used to ’em ... and not feel them biting at all ... but most tramps “boil up”—­that is, take off their clothes, a piece at a time, and boil them—­whenever they find opportunity.

* * * * *

Manila.  A brief adventure there ... a bum for a few weeks, hanging around soldiers’ barracks, blacking shoes for free meals ... till Provost Marshal General Bell, in an effort to clear the islands of boys who were vags and mascots of regiments, gave me and several other rovers and stowaways free transportation back to America....

A brief stop at Nagasaki to have a broken propeller shaft mended:  a long Pacific voyage ... then hilly San Francisco one golden morning....

* * * * *

All these ocean days I peeled potatoes and helped to dish out rations to the lined-up soldiers at meal-times ... one slice of meat, one or two potatoes, to a tin plate ...

For long hours I listened to their lying tales and boasting ... then lied and boasted, myself....

My most unique adventure aboard the Thomas; making friends with a four-times-enlisted soldier named Lang, who liked army life because, he said, outside of drills and dress parade, it was lazy and easy ... and it gave him leisure to read and re-read his Shakespeare.  He was a Shakespearean scholar....