“Yes,” he murmured, “I think I could do it. I come from an immoderately cultured family. Why, my sister was educated in a female cemetery.”
“You mean a female seminary?”
“No, I don’t; I mean a female cemetery. Why, where else would a young lady learn the dead languages?”
I had no reply to make.
“But,” pursued the marine marvel, “it really wouldn’t be necessary for me to consort to fiction; if I were to write a truthful verbatem history of my own career from the cradle to the Hall of Fame, it would prove so fascinating that the reading public would gobble it up with humidity.”
I slipped him the skeptical smile, which seemed to arouse him to a point of high resentment.
“Say, you give me a cramp!” he exclaimed resentfully. “You think I can’t deliver the goods, hey? Well, I’ll show you, some. You’ve been grafting off me for some time by plaguerizing such little mementos of my chilling adventures as I have chanced to let drop in casual conversation with you, and I’m highly distended over it.
“Now, take it from me, Burt, from this mementous hour you cease to yearn your bread and butter by parisiting on little Walter. I’m going to write my own naughty biography, and I’ll do a job at it that will put your style of bunkoing the reading public strictly on the blink. I have only one fear: what if, on publication of my personal reminoosances, some one should be unfeeling and thoughtless enough to doubt my absolute voracity? That would break my tender heart.
“Nevertheless, I’ll take a chance, remembering, as the poet puts it, that truth must rise triumphant, even though it may seem to be getting walloped groggy. Farewell, Burt. Bide a wee. You’ll gaze on my beaming counterpane no more until I have completed the colossal task I have vowed to undertake. I observe by the beautiful hand-painted culendar above your rosewood desk that it is now the conclusive day of the month of March. I shall begin my labors upon the morrow.”
He was at the door when I laughingly called: