. For the past week I have been getting my dog Fogerty
on numerous liberty lists when he shouldn't have been there, but not
contented with that he has taken to going around with a couple of
yeomen, and the first thing I know he will be getting on a special
detail where the liberty is soft. I put nothing past that dog since he
lost his head to some flop-eared huzzy with a black and tan
reputation.

_Aug. 10th._ All day long and a little longer I have been carrying
sacks of flour. The next time I see a stalk of wheat I am going to
snarl at it. This new occupation is a sort of special penance for not
having my hammock lashed in time. It seems that I have been in the
service long enough to know how to do the thing right by now, but the
seventh hitch is a sly little devil and always gets me. I need a
longer line or a shorter hammock, but the only way out of it that I
can see is to get a commission and rate a bed.

[Illustration: "I CARRIED ALL THE FLOUR TO-DAY THAT WAS RAISED LAST
YEAR IN THE SOUTHERN SECTION OF THE STATE OF MONTANA"]

I carried all the flour to-day that was raised last year in the
southern section of the State of Montana, and I was carrying it well
and cheerfully until one of my pet finger nails (the one that the
manicure girls in the Biltmore used to rave about) thrust itself
through the sack and precipitated its contents upon myself and the
floor. A commissary steward when thoroughly aroused is a poisonous
member of society. One would have thought that I had sunk the great
fleet the way this bird went on about one little sack of flour.

"Here Mr. Hoover works hard night and day all winter," he sobs at me,
"and you go spreading it around as if you were Marie Antoinette."

I wondered what new scandal he had about Marie Antoinette, but I held
my peace. My horror was so great that the real color of my face made
the flour look like a coat of sunburn in comparison.

"There's enough flour there," he continued reproachfully, pointing to
the huge mound of stuff in which I stood like a lost explorer on a
snow-capped mountain peak and wishing heartily that I was one,
"there's enough flour," he continued, "to keep a chief petty officer
in pie for twenty-four hours."

"Just about," thought I to myself.

"Well," he cried irritably, "pick it up. Be quick. Pick it up--all of
it!"

"Pick it up," I replied through a cloud of mist, "you can't pick up
flour. You can pick up apples and pears and cabbages and ciga