After a preliminary flourish I began to reel off the figures I had committed to memory the previous night. Before I had got very far Mr. Pulitzer cried.
"Stop! Are you reading those figures?"
"No," I replied. "I read them over last night in the Daily Telegraph."
"My God! Are you giving them from memory? Haven't you got a note of them in your hand? Hasn't he? Hasn't he? …" appealing to the table.
Reassured on this point he said, "Well, go on, go on. This interests me."
As soon as I had finished he turned to Craven and said, "Go and get that paper, and find the article."
When Craven returned with it, he continued, "Now, Mr. Ireland, go over those figures again; and you, Mr. Craven, check them off and see if they're correct. Now, play fair, no tricks!"
I had made two mistakes, which were reported as soon as they were spoken. At the end Mr. Pulitzer said:
"Well, you see, you hadn't got them right, after all. But that's not so bad. With a memory like that you might have known something by now if you'd only had the diligence to read."
My second score was made just at the end of dinner, or rather when dinner had been finished some time and J. P. was lingering at table over his cigar. The question of humor came up, and someone remarked how curious it was that one of the favorite amusements of the American humorist should be to make fun of the Englishman for his lack of humor— "Laugh, and all the world laughs with you, except the Englishman," and so on. The usual defenses were made—Hood, Thackeray, Gilbert, Calverley, etc.—and then Punch was referred to.