“What did you fall against?”
“I fell against my will. One of the fairy guards mistook me for an enemy, and fired a charge of shot at me.”
“Did you press a complaint?”
“No, I withdrew the charge.”
Into an admiring group some distance off the well-informed Dude was instilling the first principles of etiquette.
“It is not good form to try to eat your peas with a knife,” he told them. “You should spear them with a fork.”
And the Sailor was growling to the German:
“Avast there, you lubber! A dog-watch isn’t a chronometer.”
The Indian with a flourish of his tomahawk came running to King Stanislaus, and imparted the surprising intelligence:
“The dromedary’s swallowed all the door-knobs, and the knobs are in his stomachs.”