“Whenever you give the interviewer a fact,” he said, “give him another fact that will contradict it.  Then he’ll go away with a jumble that he can’t use at all.  Be gentle, be sweet, smile like an idiot—­just be natural.”  That’s what my friend told me to do, and I did it.

“Where were you born?” asked the interviewer.

“Well-er-a,” I began, “I was born in Alabama, or Alaska, or the Sandwich Islands; I don’t know where, but right around there somewhere.  And you had better put it down before you forget it.”

“But you weren’t born in all those places,” he said.

“Well, I’ve offered you three places.  Take your choice.  They’re all at the same price.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“I shall be nineteen in June,” I said.

“Why, there’s such a discrepancy between your age and your looks,” he said.

“Oh, that’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.”