“I have received a message,” he gurgled, “from on High. It is a plan to rid the country of all lewd and obscene literature overnight.”
Throwing himself on the floor in front of Cutie, our hero sunk his false teeth into her ankle and barked for more.
“You are my inspiration,” Herman cried. “Until you came into my life, I was only an ordinary censor and reformer. Now I feel new vigor in my veins. I feel strong enough to stamp out the entire sins of our age.”
Cutie reached for a crowbar which was standing on the mantlepiece and as she did so her kimona carried the ball for ten yards around the left end. Herman couldn’t restrain himself and raised his voice in song.
“When Jesus shows his shining face there is sunshine in my soul,” our hero chanted.
“Stand up, poison ivy,” Cutie interrupted, kicking him under the chin, “and if you try to bite me once more I will play taps on your skull with this crowbar. I won’t stand for your making love to me unless you use a pair of iceman’s tongs and a mask. You are a very rough man, Herman, besides which you have a face which in its happiest moments reminds me of a cow pasture, it being so full of places I can’t look.”
“Oh, my dear young woman,” our hero moaned, “you have failed to understand me. You are my inspiration for higher things. You do not know how lewd and wicked is the world. How dangerous it is for little children to grow up surrounded by lewd and obscene literature.”
Herman’s potato head fell despairingly on Cutie’s knee.
“Debauchery is everywhere,” our hero groaned. “I cannot sleep nights thinking of all the evil there is and of the things I have left undone.”
Cutie felt a pang of conscience. Emboldened by her silence, Herman’s noble heart grew warm. He reached one of his fins for her ribs and declaimed passionately: