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.
"You're right. You're the man with imagination.
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