"Yes, I have, a good many times." "How many?" "Why, I don't know how many." "Well, strike an average. How many times a year do you think you have told it?" "Well, I have told it as many as six times a year, possibly oftener." "Very well, then you've told it, we'll say, seventy or eighty times since it happened?" "Yes," I said, "that's a conservative estimate." "Now then, Mark, a very extraordinary thing happened to me a great many years ago, and I used to tell it a number of times--a good many times--every year, for it was so wonderful that it always astonished the hearer, and that astonishment gave me a distinct pleasure every time. I never suspected that that tale was acquiring any auxiliary advantages through repetition until one day after I had been telling it ten or fifteen years it struck me that either I was getting old, and slow in delivery, or that the tale was longer than it was when it was born. Mark, I diligently and prayerfully examined that tale with this result: that I found that its proportions were now, as nearly as I could make oat, one part fact, straight fact, fact pure and undiluted, golden fact, and twenty-four parts embroidery. I never told that tale afterwards--I was never able to tell it again, for I had lost confidence in it, and so the pleasure of telling it was gone, and gone permanently. How much of this tale of yours is embroidery?" "Well," I said, "I don't know. I don't think any of it is embroidery. I think it is all just as I have stated it, detail by detail." "Very well," he said, "then it is all right, but I wouldn't tell it any more; because if you keep on, it will begin to collect embroidery sure. The safest thing is to stop now."