“Yes, sir, the game was ours. We thought it was, leastways. All he had to do was touch that there ball to the ground! The whole of Kingstown was drawing in its breath to let out a cheer as soon as he done it. “But it never let that yell. For when he reached the goal----” Here Joe broke off again and chuckled. “Say,” he said, “you ain't going to believe what I'm telling you now. It's too unlikely. I didn't believe it myself when I seen it. But it happened. Yes, sir, that nut never touched the ground with the ball! “Instead, with the ball still under one arm, he climbed a goal post. Climbed it, I tell you, with both legs and one arm. And setting straddle of that cross bar believe me or not, he began to shuck. In front of all that crowd, dud after dud, he shucked. “And there wasn't no cheers then, for in a minute there he set, _a monkey!_ Yes, sir, the biggest blamed monkey you ever seen, trying to crack that football open on a goal post under the belief that it was a cocoa-nut. Monkey, did I say? Monkey ain't any word for it! He was a regular ape; he was one of these here orang-outang baboons! Yes, sir, a regular gosh-darned Darwinian gorilla!” Joe took a fresh light for his cigar, and cocked his eye again at my sporting supplement. “I notice,” he said, sarcastically, “Princeton had a couple of men hurt yesterday in the Yale game. Well, accidents is bound to happen even in ring-around-the-rosy or prisoner's base. What?” TOO AMERICAN Is it a real English cottage?” we asked the agent suspiciously, “or is it one that has been hastily aged to rent to Americans?” It was the real thing: he vouched for it. It was right in the middle of England. The children could walk for miles in any direction without falling off the edge of England and getting wet. “See here!” I said. “How many blocks from Scotland is it?” “Blocks from Scotland?” He didn't understand. “Yes,” I said, “blocks from Scotland.” I explained. My wife and I had been trying to get a real English accent. That was one of the things we had come to England for. We wanted to take it back with us and use it in Brooklyn, and we didn't want to get too near Scotland and get any Scottish dialect mixed up with it. It seemed that the cottage was quite a piece from Scotland. There was a castle not far away--the fifteenth castle on the right side as you go into England. When there wasn't any wind you didn't get a raw sea breeze or hear the ocean vessels whistle. “Is it overgrown with ivy,” asked Marian, my wife. Yes, it was ivy-covered. You could scarcely see it for ivy--ivy that was pulling the wall down, ivy as deep-rooted as the hereditary idea. “Are the drains bad?” I asked. They were. There would be no trouble on that score. What plumbing there was, was leaky. The roof leaked. There was neither gas nor electricity, nor hot and cold water, nor anything else.