The Wonderful Adventures of Cap’n Wiley.

Written by Himself. Edited by Burt L. Standish.

INTRODUCTORY.

I was sitting in my den desperately seeking the germ thought for a story when Cap’n Wiley blew in and appropriated the easy-chair.

“Ah, there, old top,” said he. “So I’ve caught you red-handed in your little sanctum sanctotum. What meaneth the distraught look which corregateth thy dome of thought?”

“Cap’n,” said I, “you jar me. I’m thinking.”

“Don’t do it,” he entreated. “You’re taking a frightful chance when you put such a strain on your impoverished gray matter. You don’t have to think to write the sort of souperific stuff you slosh out.”

“Don’t I!” I cried, exasperated. “Well, now, perhaps you think you could write it yourself?”

“No,” he answered cheerfully, “nothing quite as distressing. Now, if I was going to write, I’d hand the yearning public some real littery litterchewer, just for a change. I say, Burt, old sport, I think I’ll try one of your Havana imperfectos, if you have one inconvenient at hand.”

I brought out a box of cigars, and he helped himself to a handful. Then he “borrowed” a match, fired up, and settled back, with a sigh of satisfaction, on the easy-chair.

“Yes,” he murmured, “I think I could do it. I come from an immoderately cultured family. Why, my sister was educated in a female cemetery.”

“You mean a female seminary?”

“No, I don’t; I mean a female cemetery. Why, where else would a young lady learn the dead languages?”

I had no reply to make.

“But,” pursued the marine marvel, “it really wouldn’t be necessary for me to consort to fiction; if I were to write a truthful verbatem history of my own career from the cradle to the Hall of Fame, it would prove so fascinating that the reading public would gobble it up with humidity.”

I slipped him the skeptical smile, which seemed to arouse him to a point of high resentment.

“Say, you give me a cramp!” he exclaimed resentfully. “You think I can’t deliver the goods, hey? Well, I’ll show you, some. You’ve been grafting off me for some time by plaguerizing such little mementos of my chilling adventures as I have chanced to let drop in casual conversation with you, and I’m highly distended over it.

“Now, take it from me, Burt, from this mementous hour you cease to yearn your bread and butter by parisiting on little Walter. I’m going to write my own naughty biography, and I’ll do a job at it that will put your style of bunkoing the reading public strictly on the blink. I have only one fear: what if, on publication of my personal reminoosances, some one should be unfeeling and thoughtless enough to doubt my absolute voracity? That would break my tender heart.

“Nevertheless, I’ll take a chance, remembering, as the poet puts it, that truth must rise triumphant, even though it may seem to be getting walloped groggy. Farewell, Burt. Bide a wee. You’ll gaze on my beaming counterpane no more until I have completed the colossal task I have vowed to undertake. I observe by the beautiful hand-painted culendar above your rosewood desk that it is now the conclusive day of the month of March. I shall begin my labors upon the morrow.”

He was at the door when I laughingly called:

“Don’t forget that to-morrow is the first day of April, cap’n.”

He seared me with a look of scorn, and vanished.

I did not set eyes upon him again for more than two months, but, as he frequently absented himself for more or less protracted periods, I thought nothing of it. When he did turn up again I had quite forgotten about his threat to write his autobiography, and I don’t think I ever mentioned it to him. Some months later he met with that sad and terrible accident which brought his really adventurous life to a tragic termination.

Recently, in looking through a trunk in which were stowed some of the cap’n’s effects, a relative discovered a huge bundle of foolscap paper carefully tied up with ribbons made of cigar bands taken from my own cigars on various visits of Walter to my den. The paper was covered with writing, almost undecipherable in its hasty scrawl, which told that the penman had dashed off every line at fever heat. It proved to be the autobiography, and was given into my hands.

I have edited it with some pains, being at times compelled to use the blue pencil freely, and to tone down in many places the cap’n’s flamboyant style.

Burt L. Standish.