masticated grape-nuts and produced
this aphorism. And there's a world of truth in it, my son. You certainly
never can.

One fine morning last August (yes, there was _one_), I stepped out of my
diggings in an obscure Cornish fishing-village to find a gentleman
busily engaged strangling a lady on the cliff side. He had her by the
throat and was gradually forcing her over the edge. Once in Bristol I
interposed in a slogging contest between husband and wife and was very
properly chastised for my interference, not only by the happy pair but
by the entire street, who had valuable bets laid on the event. That, you
say, should have been a lesson to me. But you know me, Ginger,
impetuous, chivalrous, brave; I simply couldn't stand there and watch a
defenceless woman--moreover a good-looking woman--foully done to death
like that. I flung myself upon the villain--that is to say I spoke to
him about it.

"Oh, dash it, old bean," I said, "draw it mild!"

Somebody shouted something behind me, but I didn't catch its purport for
the sufficient reason that at that moment the long-suffering cliff gave
way and we all went overboard, all three of us, he, she and it--me.

Fortunately the drop wasn't terrific--not more than four feet or so--and
the tide happened to be in at the time, which was very decent of it. My
first thought as I came to the surface--or, at any rate, _one_ of my
first thoughts--was "What of the woman?" I struck out for the poor
creature. At the same moment she struck out for me, and, what is more,
she got me too, clean between the eyes--a straight left-hander.

"Out of my way, fathead!" she hissed and went on for the shore under
her own steam at about forty knots an hour. I was washed up myself,
along with a quantity of other jetsam, a few minutes later, to be met by
a small furious man with a heliotrope complexion and white spats who
wagged bunches of typescript under my nose and informed me that I had
absolutely ruined about twenty million feet of the Flickerscope
Company's five-reel paralyser, "The Smuggler's Bride."

Of course you say that you saw what was coming all along. Of course you
did. But wait a moment.

Yesterday afternoon I was strolling down a certain fashionable street
when a loud explosion occurred in a near-by shop and a cloud of acrid
grey smoke came rolling out. Being by nature as inquisitive as a
chipmunk I was on the point of shoving my head round the door-jamb to
see what was up when cautio