To fight for pay and as a profession is one thing; to offer your freedom and your life, to endure discomforts and actual hardships, to risk health in a fever-stricken foreign country, and to sacrifice settled ambition for mere patriotism, is another.

It is the latter which the Volunteer Naval Reserve of the United States has done, and every American citizen with a drop of honest blood in his veins will surely give the organization the praise it so richly deserves.
On the third of May, while Cervera's whereabouts was still an absorbing mystery, the "Yankee" (an auxiliary cruiser, converted from the steamship "El Nort") went into commission at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

She was manned entirely, save for the captain, executive officer, navigator, paymaster, and the marine guard, by members of the New York State Naval Militia.

For four months she remained in commission, weaving the threads of a glorious record which will ever redound to the credit and honor of the Volunteer Naval Reserve.

Truth is ever stranger than fiction, and the simple story of the boys of the gallant "Yankee," as set forth in the diary of Number Five of the After Port Gun, should appeal to the heart of every reader in this great country of ours--a country made grander and better and more potent in the world's history by the achievements of such brave lads as those who formed the crew of the "Yankee." Number Five's diary was written simply for his family, but the fame gained by the "Yankee" leads the publishers to believe that it will prove interesting to Americans far and wide.