The Story of a Wonder Man
Being the Autobiography of Ring Lardner
Foreword
By Sarah E. Spooldripper
The publication of this autobiography is entirely without the late Master’s sanction. He wrote it as a pastime and burnt up each chapter as soon as it was written; the salvaging was accomplished by ghouls who haunted the Lardners’ ash bbl. during my whole tenure of office as night nurse to their dromedary.
Some of the copy was so badly charred as to be illegible. The ghouls took the liberty of filling in these hiatuses with “stuff” of their own, which can be readily distinguished from the Master’s as it is not nearly as good. Readers and critics are therefore asked to bear in mind that those portions of the book which they find entertaining are the work of the Master himself; those which bore them or sound forced are interpolations by milksops.
Another request which I know the Master would have wished me to make is that neither reader nor critic read the book through at one sitting (Cries of “Fat chance!” and “Hold ’em, Stanford!”). It was written a chapter at a time and should be perused the same way with, say, a rest of from seven weeks to two months between chapters. It might even be advisable to read one chapter and then take the book back to the exchange desk, saying you had made a mistake.
Mr. Lardner’s friends will regret that he omitted from these memoirs reference to his encounter with Mussolini, the Tiger of France and Italy. The two happened to be occupying the same compartment on “The Dixie Flyer” between Cannes and Mentone.
“Great golf weather,” remarked the Tiger.
“I beg your pardon,” replied the writer. “Je ne parle pas le Wop.”
I forget what else happened.
Introduction
By the employment of methods amounting almost to the so-called third degree, the heads of the publishers syndicate who I am under contract has finally got me to write my autobiography, a task which I shrink from it like Pola from a camera, yet which the doing of which I feel I owe it to my public.
This then is the first installment, but will precede same with a brief acct. of the comical scene in the publishing offices which culminated in me undertaking to do the work under certain conditions. In the first place I was decoyed into the offices by a letter from the boss saying they was a package waiting there for me from a admire in Yuma that looked like salt water taffy. This was a hoax and I hadn’t no sooner than entered the door when I was bashed in the stomach by some blunt instrument, probably a wardrobe trunk. When I regained conscious I was laying on my back in the gun room while the head of a midiron had been shoved into my mouth with the heel resting vs. the roof of same and the toe on the tongue, and a Mr. Perkins the manager had began to pull my teeth with some blunt instrument. When this had got past the amusing stage I told them I would do what they wanted provided the work was not published prior to my death.
“That suits us,” said the boss, “if you’ll promise to die by the Fourth of July.”
The others took up the refrain:
If you’ll promise to die
By the Fourth of July.
Agreements were then signed and I hurried home to exhume diaries and notes containing the material necessary for a accurate autobiography and will now begin writing it with a determination to stick to facts and to not let the truth be interfered with by a personal modesty never excelled and perhaps only equalled in this generation by well, maybe Oscar Wilde and Belasco.
I
The Birth of a Wonder Man
The first week in March, 1885, was a gala week throughout the civilized world, the United States in general and the latter’s great middle west in particular. In this one week there was an unfounded rumor of a royal betrothal between Queen Victoria and King Gillette; a young Washington dentist, Dr. Ghoul, watched a mixed fivesome tee off at Chevy Chase and predicted that four of them would have pyorrhea; the Lardners of Niles, Mich., announced the
