Duplicate social titles, a

Octopus ink wrote my finest letters. I kept one as a clerk on a voyage to Macao. He could write with eight pens at the same time. He kept the log, did the sums, and drew the charts. When he blushed, the whole page turned pink, and I knew he had lied.

Pistols need no powder if you load them with insults. I proved this in a duel at Dresden. I aimed and then I called him a turnip. He fell to the grass in a dead faint. His seconds took it up with me, but I had a spare insult for each.

Snow fell so deep in Russia that winter that I skied across the roofs of Moscow and never once saw the street. In April the drifts melted. Then I found I had been sleeping for months on top of a cathedral. The bishop charged me rent, and I paid him in icicles.

Echoes in the Alps are lazy. I shouted my name at a cliff in Switzerland, and the answer did not arrive until the next spring. It came back a bit hoarse, with a slight French accent. Still, I was glad to hear from myself after so long a time.

Dreams.