"You see," says he, "if I were to write a book, I would begin with the beginning."
"I do begin with the beginning," I retort, "only there are some preliminary facts which may as well be told in the course of the narrative. I like to enter in medias res."
"You need not swank about your Latin," he answers. "You remind me of the War Office. They (he has an undescribable way of accentuating the word they when he speaks of the War Office) they, too, like young officers to get acquainted with the 'preliminary facts in the course of the narrative'; while my opinion is: An officer must begin with the beginning. Look here, P. C., suppose you had been Holy Moses, you would have written the Bible thus: 'God created man in his own image, after having created the great whales, and even at an earlier date two great lights. I may as well tell you that before that he had said: Let there be light, and that at the very beginning he had created heaven and earth.'"
And very sternly the Sergeant adds:
"I wish to know why you were in Munich...?"
"I wanted to improve myself in the noble art of composition."
"Don't interrupt me ... and why you left it for Vienna?"
"I will tell you."
He: "Not yet. I must hear about another thing first. Did you miss a rat yesterday?"
I (with an expression of guilt): "I did."