She'll
wait a year, anyway.
_March 22d._ I made up verses to myself in my hammock last night.
Perhaps I'll send some of them to the camp paper. It would be nice to
see your stuff in print. Here's one of the poems:
_THE UNREGENERATE SAILOR MAN_
I
I take my booze
In my overshoes;
I'm fond of the taste of rubber;
I oil my hair
With the grease of bear
Or else with a bull whale's blubber.
II
My dusky wife
Was a source of strife,
So I left her in Singapore
And sailed away
At the break of day--
Since then I have widowed four.
III
Avast! Belay,
And alack-a-day
That I gazed in the eyes of beauty.
For in devious ways
Their innocent gaze
Has caused me much extra duty.
IV
I never get past
The jolly old mast,
The skipper and I are quite chummy;
He knows me by sight
When I'm sober or tight
And calls me a "wicked old rummy."
A sort of sweetheart-in-every-port type I intend to make him--a
seafaring man of the old school such as I suppose some of the
six-stripers around here were. I don't imagine it was very difficult
to get a good conduct record in the old days, because from all the
tales I've heard from this source and that, a sailor-man who did not
too openly boast of being a bigamist and who limited his homicidical
inclinations to half a dozen foreigners when on shore leave, was
considered a highly respectable character.
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