t's nothing," I said, "I was born discrepantly."

Then we got to talking about my brother Samuel, and he told me my
explanations were confusing.

"I suppose he is dead," I said. "Some said that he was dead and some
said that he wasn't."

"Did you bury him without knowing whether he was dead or not?" asked the
reporter.

"There was a mystery," said I. "We were twins, and one day when we were
two weeks old--that is, he was one week old, and I was one week old--we
got mixed up in the bath-tub, and one of us drowned. We never could tell
which. One of us had a strawberry birthmark on the back of his hand.
There it is on my hand. This is the one that was drowned. There's no
doubt about it.

"Where's the mystery?" he said.

"Why, don't you see how stupid it was to bury the wrong twin?" I
answered. I didn't explain it any more because he said the explanation
confused him. To me it is perfectly plain.

But, to get back to Fulton. I'm going along like an old man I used to
know who used to start to tell a story about his grandfather. He had an
awfully retentive memory, and he never finished the story, because
he switched off into something else. He used to tell about how his
grandfather one day went into a pasture, where there was a ram. The old
man dropped a silver dime in the grass, and stooped over to pick it
up. The ram was observing him, and took the old man's action as an
invitation.

Just as he was going to finish about the ram this friend of mine would
recall that his grandfather had a niece who had a glass eye. She used
to loan that glass eye to another lady friend, who used it when she
received company. The eye didn't fit the friend's face, and it was
loose. And whenever she winked it would turn aver.

Then he got on the subject of accidents, and he would tell a story about
how he believed accidents never happened.

"There was an Irishman coming down a ladder with a hod of bricks," he
said, "and a Dutchman was standing on the ground below. The Irishman
fell on the Dutchman and killed him. Accident? Never! If the Dutchman
hadn't been there the Irishman would have been killed. Why didn't the
Irishman fall on a dog which was next, to the Dutchman? Because the dog
would have seen him coming."

Then he'd get off from the Dutchman to an uncle named Reginald Wilson.
Reginald went into a carpet factory one day, and got twisted into the
machinery's belt. He went excursioning around the factory until he was
properly