That's the sort of song they
might sing in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish
that story and give me some of the profits?"
"It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your
hero in the first instance it might have been finished by now.
You're so hazy in your notions."
"I only want to give you the general notion of it--the knocking
about from place to place and the fighting and all
that. Can't you fill in the rest yourself? Make the hero save a girl
on a pirate-galley and marry her or do something."
'You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went
through some few adventures before he married."
"Well then, make him a very artful card--a low sort of man--a sort of
political man who went about making treaties and breaking them--a
black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting
began."
"But you said the other day that he was red-haired."
"I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no
imagination."
Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which
the half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled
to laugh, but forbore, for the sake of the tale.
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