“Ah, tell us a new one!” he said. “That's ancient history!”
“What-what-what,” Prissy stammered. “Who told you s'mush?”
“Pet Bet. telephoned it to us this morning. I heard it from three other people to-day.”
“Well, ain't that abslooshly abdominable.”
Prissy began to cry softly. He knew the pangs of an author circumvented by a plagiarist.
The next morning his head ached and he rang up an eye-opener or two. The valet found him in violet pajamas, holding his jangling head and moaning:
“There was too much sugar in the punch.”
He remembered Pet's treachery, and he groaned that there was too much vinegar in life. But he determined to fight for his story, and he did. Long after Pet had turned her attention to other reputations, Prissy was still peddling his yarn.
The story went circlewise outward and onward like the influence of a pebble thrown into a pool. Two people who had heard the story and doubted it met; one told it to the other; the other said she had heard it before; and they parted mutually supported and definitely convinced that the rumor was fact. Repetition is confirmation, and history is made up of just such self-propelled lies—fact founded on fiction.
We create for ourselves a Nero or a Cleopatra, a Washington or a Molly Pitcher, from the gossip of enemies or friends or imaginers, and we can be sure of only one thing—that we do not know the true truth.