“But that ain’t what I tell late at night, an’ it ain’t what I want to read.  Ye bet it ain’t.  If I wint over to a book store an’ blew in me good thirty-nine cints f’r a dollar-an’-a-half book, I’d want some kind iv a hero that I never see around these corners.  Th’ best day I iver knew Jawn L. Sullivan had a little something on me.  I won’t say it was much, but now that we’re both retired, I’ll say that I’m glad I niver challenged him.  But I wudden’t look at a book, an’ I wudden’t annyway, but I wudden’t let Hogan tell me about a hero that cudden’t wear an overcoat an’ rubber boots, have wan arm done up in a sling, an’ something th’ matther with th’ other, blue spectatacles on his eyes, a plug hat on his head, th’ aujeence throwin’ bricks at him, an’ th’ referee usin’ a cross-cut saw on his neck, an’ thin make two hundher an’ fifty Jawn L. Sullivans establish th’ new record f’r th’ leap through th’ window.  Whin I want a hero, I want a good wan.  I don’t care whether ‘tis a wolf, a sojer, or a Prisident.  It all comes to th’ same thing—­whether ‘tis Hogan’s frind, th’ Wolf that he’s been talkin’ about f’r a year, or that other old frind iv his that he used to talk about—­what d’ye call him?—­ah, where’s me mind goin’?—­Ivanhoe.

“But Tiddy Rosenfelt don’t feel that way about it.  He’s called down thim nature writers just th’ same way he’d call me down if I wint befure th’ fifth grade at th’ Brothers’ school an’ told thim what I thought wud inthrest thim about Dock Haggerty.  What does he say?  I’ll tell ye.  ’I do not wish to be harsh,’ says he, ’but if I wanted to charackterize these here nature writers, I wud use a much shorter an’ uglier wurrud thin liar, if I cud think iv wan, which I cannot.  Ye take, f’r example, What’s-his-name.  Has this man iver been outside iv an aviary?  I doubt it.  Here he has a guinea pig killin’ a moose be bitin’ it in th’ ear.  Now it is notoryous to anny lover iv th’ wilds, anny man with a fondness f’r these monarchs iv forests, that no moose can be kilt be a wound in th’ ear.  I have shot a thousand in th’ ear with no bad effects beyond makin’ thim hard iv hearin’.

“’Here is a book befure me be wan iv these alleged nature writers.  This is a man whose name is a household wurrud in Conneticut.  His books are used in th’ schools.  An’ what does this man, who got his knowledge iv wild beasts apparently fr’m mis-treatin’ hens f’r th’ pip, say; what is his message to th’ little babblin’ childher iv Conneticut?  It is thim that I’ve got to think iv.  Instead iv tellin’ thim th’ blessed truth, instead iv leadin’ thim up be thurly Christyan teachings to an undherstandin’ iv what is right an’ what is ideel in life, he poisons their innocent minds with th’ malicious, premeditated falsehood—­I can’t think iv an uglier or shorter wurrud that wud go with premeditated—­that th’ wolf kills th’ grizzly bear be sinkin’ its hidyous fangs into th’ gapin’ throat iv its prey.  How can honest citizens an’