“You see,” explained Adams, “when a man, usin’ his imagination, tells what’s not true, just to deceive people an’ mislead ’em, we call it lyin’, but when his imagination invents what’s not true merely for the fun o’ the thing, an’ tells it as a joke, never pretendin’ that it’s true, he ain’t lyin’, he’s only tellin’ a story, or a anecdote, or a parable. Now, Dan, put that in your pipe an’ smoke it. Likewise shut your potato-trap, and let me go on wi’ my story, which is, (he looked impressively round, while every eye gazed, and ear listened, and mouth opened in breathless attention), the Adventure of Robinson Crusoe an’ his man Friday!”
All eyes were turned, as if by magic, on Thursday,—as if there must be some strange connection here. Toc suddenly shut his mouth and hung his head in confusion at this unexpected concentration of attention on himself.
“You’ve no need to be ashamed, Thursday,” said Adams, with a laugh. “You’ve got the advantage of Friday, anyhow, bein’ a day in advance of him. Well, as I was about to say, boys an’ girls, this Robinson Crusoe was a seafarin’ man, just like myself; an’ he went to sea, an’ was shipwrecked on a desolate island just like this, but there was nobody whatever on that island, not even a woman or a babby. Poor Robinson was all alone, an’ it wasn’t till a consid’rable time after he had gone ashore that he discovered Friday, (who was a black savage), through seein’ his footprint in the sand.”
Adams having burst thus suddenly into the very marrow of his story, had no reason thereafter to complain either of interruption or inattention. Neither had he reason to find fault with the wealth of his prolific imagination. It would have done the soul of a painter good to have watched the faces of that rapt, eager, breathless audience, and it would have afforded much material for reflection to a student of mind, had he, knowing the original story of Robinson Crusoe, been permitted to trace the ingenious sinuosities and astounding creations by which Adams wove his meagre amount of original matter into a magnificent tale, which not only thrilled his audience, but amazed himself.
In short, he quite justified the assurance formerly given to Sally, that the story of Robinson Crusoe would make the hair of his hearers stand on end, their sides almost split open, and the very marrow in their spines wriggle. Indeed, his version of the tale might have caused similar results in Robinson Crusoe himself, had he been there to hear it, besides causing his eyebrows to rise and vanish evermore among the hair of his head with astonishment.
It was the same with the Pilgrim’s Progress, which he often told to them afterwards. Simple justice to Adams, however, requires us to state that he was particularly careful to impress on his hearers that the Pilgrim’s Progress was a religious tale.
“It’s a allegory, you must know,” he said, on first introducing it, “which means a story intended to teach some good lesson—a story which says one thing and means another.”
He looked pointedly at Dan McCoy here, as if to say, “That’s an exhaustive explanation, which takes the wind out o’ your sails, young man,” but Dan was not to be so easily silenced.
“What’s the use, father,” he asked, with an air of affected simplicity, “of a story sayin’ one thing an’ meanin’ another? Wouldn’t it be more honest like if it said what it meant at once, straight off?”
“P’r’aps it would,” returned Adams, who secretly enjoyed Dan’s irrepressible impudence; “but, then, if it did, Dan, it would take away your chance of askin’ questions, d’ye see? Anyhow, this story don’t say what it means straight off, an’ that gives me a chance to expound it.”