Personally I have a horror of the Zeppelin and its powers to make things uncomfortable from its aërial thoroughfares; but as between it and the perils of being shot up from below by playful spirits in a frontier saloon I think I shall choose the Zeppelin if the choice must be made. At any rate, if either emergency should ever again enter into my life, I trust I shall have a bomb-proof roof overhead, or an armor-plated hair mattress underneath me; for I have no taste for a last end in which a coroner will be called upon to decide whether the victim of the affair was a mortal being, or a lifeless combination of porous plaster and human sieve.
XIII
EMBARRASSING MOMENTS
I shall never forget the expression of serene immunity from care on the face of one of my editorial chiefs when some years ago I told him that I was very much embarrassed by certain arrangements he himself had made over my head. They were such arrangements as to make my position frankly impossible.
"You have embarrassed me more than I care to say," said I.
"Embarrassment is a sign of weakness," he replied calmly. "Don't ever be embarrassed."
"But what can I do?" said I. "You have made these arrangements, and—"
"Well, if I were you," said he, smiling, and putting considerable emphasis on the you, "rather than admit that anything under heaven embarrassed me I'd tell me to go to the devil with my arrangements."