“And I am rather glad of it, for the aforesaid young ladies must be nearly sixty years old now, and some of them wear glasses and decayed teeth. If I had time, dear reader, I could tell you how, in 1492, under the _nom de plume_ of Christopher Columbus, I discovered America. This is a fact not generally known. Sometimes it seems like a wild, weird dream. You may have read something about the discovery. It was considered important at the time; but more than one person, no doubt, upon looking around and seeing the distressing amount of misery in America, and observing how bogus mining companies, policy shops, rowing matches, political corruption and other frauds flourish like a green baize, will regret that I ever discovered it. “I have one wife. “I could, if my other duties permitted, describe how, in 1773, I surrounded thirty-two wild Indians, and after a hand-to-hand conflict lasting seven hours, I killed twenty-four of the redskins, wounded sixteen, and took eleven prisoners. The remainder fled. Aside from being pierced by twenty-one arrows, I escaped without a scratch. “And yet I was never made the hero of a dime novel! Probably because I didn’t wear long hair and a soft hat as big around as a cart wheel. “I am not addicted to bicycle riding--and therefore still retain the respect of my neighbors. “If it was not my hour to go out and see a man, it would afford me great pleasure to allude to the day that I landed at Plymouth Rock, with a lot of pilgrims, without any “rocks” in my pocket. I shall never do it again. “I never wrote a comic opera. “This assertion, if made public, would be received with an air--or rather a tornado of incredulity. It would be accepted as a wild, reckless piece of exaggeration. And yet it is a positive fact. “I shall not refer to the time I fell at Bunker Hill--caused by stepping on a banana skin,--nor mention the fact that I once struck a gentleman called Billy Patterson. I forgot the date of the latter event; but I desire to say in extenuation that Mr. Patterson struck me first. And yet he had the facial prominence to sue me for assault and battery. However, the grand jury ignored the bill, and saddled the cost upon the plaintiff. “I have never--never, understand, without any ‘hardly’ qualification about it--lectured. “My wife has, to an audience of one.