The easiest part of this task was that of reading humorous books to J. P. When he was in the right mood and would submit to the process, I read to him the greater part of "Dooley," of Artemus Ward, of Max Adler, and portions of W. W. Jacobs, of Lorimer's Letters of a Self-made Merchant to His Son, of Mrs. Anne Warner's Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop, and of some of Stockton's delightful stories. My greatest triumph was in inducing him to forget for a while his intense aversion to slang and to listen to the shrewd and genial philosophy of George Ade. The work of the official humorist to J. P. was rendered particularly arduous because he carried into the field of humor, absolutely unabated, his passion for facts. To most people a large part of humor consists in the manner of presentation, in the trick of phrase, in the texture of the narrative. To J. P. those things meant little or nothing; what amused him was the situation disclosed, the inherent humor of the action or thought. As I have said, it was not difficult to read humorous material to J. P. when he deliberately resigned himself to it. What was exceedingly difficult was to rise to those frequent occasions when, tired, vexed and out of sorts, he suddenly interrupted your summary of a magazine article by saying: "Stop! Stop! For God's sake! I've got a frightful headache. Now tell me some humorous stories--make me laugh." In order to meet these urgent and embarrassing demands I ransacked the periodical press of England and America. I procured a year's file of Pearson's Weekly, of Tit Bits and of Life, and scores of stray copies of Puck, Judge and Answers. From these I cut hundreds of short humorous paragraphs, which I kept in a box in my cabin. Whenever I was summoned to attend upon J. P. I put a handful of these clippings in my pocket. I am afraid I should make enemies if I were to tell of the thousands of stories I had to read in order to get the hundreds which came within range even of my modest hopes; but I may say that line for line I got more available stories from the "Newspaper Waifs" on the editorial page of the New York Evening Post than from any other source. Even after I had labored long and heroically in the vineyard of professional humor, grape juice, and not wine, was the commoner product of my efforts. It was no unusual experience that after I had told J. P. one of the best tales in my collection he would say: "Well, go on, go on, come to the point. For God's sake, isn't there any end to this story?" On October 25, 1911, we put into the harbor of Charlestown, S. C. There was the usual business of collecting mail, newspapers, and so on, for J. P., after five days at sea, was eager to pick up the thread of current happenings.