I named several books which I had been re-reading—­Macaulay’s Essays, Meredith Townsend’s Asia and Europe, and Lowes Dickinson’s Modern Symposium.

“Well, tell me something about Asia and Europe” he said.

I left my dinner untasted, and for a quarter of an hour held forth on the life of Mohammed, on the courage of the Arabians, on the charm of Asia for Asiatics, and on other matters taken from Mr. Townsend’s fascinating book.  Suddenly Mr. Pulitzer interrupted me.

“My God!  You don’t mean to tell me that anyone is interested in that sort of rubbish.  Everybody knows about Mohammed, and about the bravery of the Arabs, and, for God’s sake, why shouldn’t Asia be attractive to the Asiatics!  Try something else.  Do you remember any plays?”

Yes, I remembered several pretty well.  Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra for instance.

“Go on, then, try and tell me about that.”

My prospects of getting any dinner faded away as I began my new effort.  Fortunately I knew the play very well, and remembered a number of passages almost word for word.  I soon saw that Mr. Pulitzer was interested and pleased, not with the play as anything new to him, for he probably knew it better than I did, but with my presentation of it, because it showed some ability to compress narrative without destroying its character and also gave some proof of a good memory.

When I reached the scene in which Caesar replies to Britannus’s protest against the recognition of Cleopatra’s marriage to her brother, Ptolemy, by saying, “Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature,” Mr. Pulitzer burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

I was about to continue, and try to make good better, when Mr. Pulitzer raised his hands above his head in remonstrance.

“Stop!  Stop!  For God’s sake!  You’re hurting me,” very much as a person with a cracked lip begs for mercy when you are in the middle of your most humorous story.

I found out later that, in order to keep in Mr. Pulitzer’s good graces, it was as necessary to avoid being too funny as it was to avoid being too dull, for, while the latter fault hurt his intellectual sensitiveness, the former involved, through the excessive laughter it produced, a degree of involuntary exertion which, in his disordered physical condition, caused him acute pain.

Mr. Pulitzer’s constant use of the exclamations “My God!” and “For God’s sake!” had no relation whatever to swearing, as the term is usually understood; they were employed exactly as a French lady employs the exclamation Mon Dieu! or a German the expression Ach, du liebe Gott!  As a matter of fact, although Mr. Pulitzer was a man of strong and, at times, violent emotions, and, from his deplorable nervous state, excessively irritable, I do not think that in the eight months I was with him, during the greater part of which time he was not under any restraining influence, such as might be exerted by the presence of ladies, I heard him use any oath except occasionally a “damn,” which appealed to him, I think, as a suitable if not a necessary qualification of the word “fool.”  For Mr. Pulitzer there were no fools except damned fools.