Her glance lit on me.  “My God!  Will you look who’s here!” She came to me with her two hands stretched out.  “Billy, wretched creature, I haven’t laid eyes on you for two months!  Do you have to desert me entirely, just because you’ve fallen in love with a society girl with the face of a Japanese doll-baby?  What’s the matter with me, that I lose my lovers faster than I get them?  I just met Edgerton Rosythe; he’s got a good excuse, I admit—­I’m almost as much scared of his wife as he is himself.  But still, I’d like a chance to get tired of some man first!  Want to come upstairs with me, and see what Planchet’s doing to my old grannie in her scalping-shop?  Say, would you think it would take three days’ labor for half a dozen Sioux squaws to pull the skin off one old lady’s back?  And a week to tie up the corners of her mouth and give her a permanent smile!  ’Why, grannie,’ I said, ’good God, it would be cheaper to hire Charlie Chaplin to walk around in front of you all the rest of your life.’  But the old girl was bound to be beautiful, so I said to Planchet, ’Make her new from the waist up, Madame, for you never can tell how the fashions’ll change, and what she’ll need to show.’”

And so I knew that I was back in the real world.

APPENDIX

We live in an age, the first in human history, when religion is entirely excluded from politics and politics from religion.  It may happen, therefore, that millions of men will read this story and think it merely a joke; not realizing that it is a literal translation of the life of the world’s greatest revolutionary martyr, the founder of the world’s first proletarian party.  For the benefit of those whose historical education has been neglected, I append a series of references.  The number to the left refers to a page of this book.  The number to the right is a parallel reference to a volume of ancient records known as the Bible; specifically to those portions known as the gospels according to Matthew Everett, Mark Abell, Luka Korwsky, and John Colver.

11........Matthew 14:27

14........Matthew 6:21

16........Isaiah 3:16-26

17........Mark 12:37

70........Luke 6:24

70........John 15:17

72........Luke 9:38

73........Luke 4:40

75........Luke 11:46

78........Matthew 19:14

84........John 15:27

85........Luke 6:25

90........Matthew 12:39

95........Matthew 12:34

99........Matthew 10:9

102........Luke 4:5-8

107........Matthew 26:34

114........Matthew 26:69-75

117........James 5:1-6

119........Matthew 7:7

120........Matthew 7:11

123........Matthew 10:34

123........Matthew 10:16-17

129........Luke 23:23

131........Matthew 9:9

135........Acts 17:24