Do you know, after forty years at sea, I couldn't believe myself under oath." * * * * * Nine days later the _Mariposa_ threaded the Golden Gate and docked at San Francisco.

Humorous half-columns in the local papers, written in the customary silly way by unlicked cub reporters just out of grammar school, tickled the fancy of San Francisco for a fleeting moment in that the steamship _Mariposa_ had rescued some sea-waifs possessed of a cock-and- bull story that not even the reporters believed.

Thus, silly reportorial unveracity usually proves extraordinary truth a liar.

It is the way of cub reporters, city newspapers, and flat-floor populations which get their thrills from moving pictures and for which the real world and all its spaciousness does not exist.
"Sunk by a whale!" demanded the average flat-floor person.

"Nonsense, that's all.