On October 20, 1911, the Liberty left New York with J. P., his youngest son, Herbert, and the usual staff.  We headed south, with nothing settled as to our plans except that we might spend some time at Mr. Pulitzer’s house on Jekyll Island, Ga., and might pass part of the winter cruising in the West Indies.

As soon as we got settled down on board I was delighted to find that J. P. had apparently satisfied himself in regard to my qualifications and limitations.  He abandoned the searching examinations which had kept me on the rack for nearly eight months, and our relations became much more agreeable.

Apart from bearing my share in the routine work of dealing with the news of the day and with the current magazine literature my principal duty gradually assumed the form of furnishing humor on demand.

The easiest part of this task was that of reading humorous books to J. P. When he was in the right mood and would submit to the process, I read to him the greater part of “Dooley,” of Artemus Ward, of Max Adler, and portions of W. W. Jacobs, of Lorimer’s Letters of a Self-made Merchant to His Son, of Mrs. Anne Warner’s Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop, and of some of Stockton’s delightful stories.  My greatest triumph was in inducing him to forget for a while his intense aversion to slang and to listen to the shrewd and genial philosophy of George Ade.

The work of the official humorist to J. P. was rendered particularly arduous because he carried into the field of humor, absolutely unabated, his passion for facts.  To most people a large part of humor consists in the manner of presentation, in the trick of phrase, in the texture of the narrative.  To J. P. those things meant little or nothing; what amused him was the situation disclosed, the inherent humor of the action or thought.

As I have said, it was not difficult to read humorous material to J. P. when he deliberately resigned himself to it.  What was exceedingly difficult was to rise to those frequent occasions when, tired, vexed and out of sorts, he suddenly interrupted your summary of a magazine article by saying:  “Stop!  Stop!  For God’s sake!  I’ve got a frightful headache.  Now tell me some humorous stories—­make me laugh.”

In order to meet these urgent and embarrassing demands I ransacked the periodical press of England and America.  I procured a year’s file of Pearson’s Weekly, of Tit Bits and of Life, and scores of stray copies of Puck, Judge and Answers.

From these I cut hundreds of short humorous paragraphs, which I kept in a box in my cabin.  Whenever I was summoned to attend upon J. P. I put a handful of these clippings in my pocket.  I am afraid I should make enemies if I were to tell of the thousands of stories I had to read in order to get the hundreds which came within range even of my modest hopes; but I may say that line for line I got more available stories from the “Newspaper Waifs” on the editorial page of the New York Evening Post than from any other source.