“It’s the best life in the world ... no worries or responsibilities about food and lodging—­it spoils a fellow for any other kind of life ... the officers are always decent to a fellow who respects himself as a soldier and citizen.”

Lang and I became good pals.  Day after day I sat listening to him, as, to the accompaniment of the rumble and pulse of the great boat a-move, he quoted and explained Shakespeare to me, nearly always without the book.

His talk was fascinating—­except when he insisted on repeating to me his own wretched rhymes ... in which he showed he had learned nothing about how to write poetry from his revered Shakespeare ... it was very bad Kiplingesque stuff ... much like my own bad verse of that period....

Once Lang recited by heart the whole of King Lear to me, having me hold a copy of the play, to prove that he did not fumble a single line or miss a single word ... which he did not....

Lang was a prodigious drunkard.  At Nagasaki I rescued him from the water-butt.  Coming back drunk on rice wine, he had stuck his head down for a cool drink, as a horse does.  And in he had tumbled, head-first.  If I had not seen his legs wiggling futilely in the air, and drawn him forth, dripping, he would have drowned, as the butt was too solid for his struggles to dump, and he couldn’t make a sound for help.

* * * * *

As we neared San Francisco several of the boys spoke to me of taking up a purse for my benefit.  Soldiers are always generous and warm-hearted—­the best men, individually, in the world.

I said no to them, that they must not take up a collection for me ...  I did not really feel that way, at heart, but I liked better seeming proud and independent, American and self-reliant....

Later on, at the very dock, I acceded ... but now I was punished for my hypocrisy.  The boys were so eager to be home again, they only threw together about five dollars for me ... when, if I hadn’t been foolish, I might have had enough to loaf with, say a month, at San Francisco, and do a lot of reading in the Library, and in books of poetry that I might have picked up at second-hand book stores....

However, I gathered together, before I went ashore, two suits of khaki and two army blankets, and a pair of good army shoes that afterwards seemed never to wear out.

And a young chap named Simmons, who had been sergeant, had joined the army by running away from home, took me to an obscure hotel as his valet ... he wanted to “put on dog,” as the Indians say.

He had parents of wealth, back in Des Moines.

I served him as his valet for the two weeks he stayed at the hotel.  He had been shot through the left foot so that a tendon was severed, and he had to walk with a cane, with a foot that flopped at every step.

He gave me fifteen dollars for wages.  After he had departed I rented a cheap room for a week.