On a hot July day the army transport _Buford_ lay at the Folsom
Dock, San Francisco, the Stars and Stripes drooping from her stern,
her Blue Peter and a cloud of smoke announcing a speedy departure,
and a larger United States flag at her fore-mast signifying that she
was bound for an American port. I observed these details as I hurried
down the dock accompanied by a small negro and a dressing-bag, but
I was not at that time sufficiently educated to read them. I thought
only that the _Buford_ seemed very large (she is not large, however),
that she was beautifully white and clean; and that I was delighted
to be going away to foreign lands upon so fine a ship.
Having recognized with relief a pile of luggage going aboard--luggage
which I had carefully pasted with red, white, and blue labels crossed
by the letters "U.S.A.T.S." and _Buford_--I dismissed the negro,
grasped the dressing-bag with fervor, and mounted the gangway. To me
the occasion was momentous. I was going to see the world, and I was
one of an army of enthusiasts enlisted to instruct our little brown
brother, and to pass the torch of Occidental knowledge several degrees
east of the international date-line.
I asked the first person I met, who happened to be the third officer,
where I should go and what I should do. He told me to report at
the quartermaster's office at the end of the promenade deck.
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