“Arrest him!” he said, and then drawing himself to his full height, he brandished aloft the hair.

“This is his,” said the great detective.  “It proves his guilt.”

“Remove his hat,” said the ship’s captain sternly.

They did so.

The man was entirely bald.

“Ha!” said the great detective without a moment of hesitation.  “He has committed not one murder but about a million.”

(II) A COMPRESSED OLD ENGLISH NOVEL

SWEARWORD THE UNPRONOUNCEABLE

CHAPTER ONE AND ONLY

“Ods bodikins!” exclaimed Swearword the Saxon, wiping his mailed brow with his iron hand, “a fair morn withal!  Methinks twert lithlier to rest me in yon glade than to foray me forth in yon fray!  Twert it not?”

But there happened to be a real Anglo-Saxon standing by.

“Where in heaven’s name,” he said in sudden passion, “did you get that line of English?”

“Churl!” said Swearword, “it is Anglo-Saxon.”

“You’re a liar!” shouted the Saxon, “it is not.  It is Harvard College, Sophomore Year, Option No. 6.”

Swearword, now in like fury, threw aside his hauberk, his baldrick, and his needlework on the grass.

“Lay on!” said Swearword.

“Have at you!” cried the Saxon.

They laid on and had at one another.

Swearword was killed.

Thus luckily the whole story was cut off on the first page and ended.

(III) A CONDENSED INTERMINABLE NOVEL

From the Cradle to the grave
or A thousand pages for A dollar

Note.-This story originally contained two hundred and fifty thousand words.  But by a marvellous feat of condensation it is reduced, without the slightest loss, to a hundred and six words.

(I)

Edward Endless lived during his youth
   in Maine,
      in New Hampshire,
         in Vermont,
            in Massachusetts,
               in Rhode Island,
                  in Connecticut.

(II)

Then the lure of the city lured him.  His fate took him to
   New York, to Chicago, and to Philadelphia.

In Chicago he lived,
   in a boarding-house on Lasalle Avenue,
   then he boarded—­
   in a living-house on Michigan Avenue.

In New York he
   had a room in an eating-house on Forty-first Street,
   and then—­
   ate in a rooming-house on Forty-second Street.

In Philadelphia he
   used to sleep on Chestnut Street,
   and then—­
   slept on Maple Street.

During all this time women were calling to him.  He knew
   and came to be friends with—­
      Margaret Jones,
         Elizabeth Smith,
            Arabella Thompson,
               Jane Williams,
                  Maud Taylor.