rivelina goes. Well, then on comes
Drivelina and this beast of a Pirate grabs her by the hand and makes
love to her as if he thought wooing was a game of snap the whip. She
sings a soprano solo of protest and the Pirate summons his hirelings to
cast Drivelina into a Donjuan cell when, boom! an American warship
appears on the horizon. The crew under the leadership of a man with a
squeaky tenor voice named Lieutenant Somebody or other comes ashore,
puts Drivelina under the protection of the American flag while his crew
sings the following:

"We are Jackies, Jackies, Jackies,
And we smoke the best tobaccys
You can find from Zanzibar to Honeyloo.
And we fight for Uncle Sammy,
Yes indeed we do, for damme
You can bet your life that that's the thing to do--doodle-do!
You can bet your life that that's the thing to
doodle--doodle--doodle--doodle-do.

"Eh! What?" demanded the Idiot.

"Well--what yourself?" asked the Lawyer. "This is your job. What next?"

"Well--the Pirate gets lively, tries to assassinate the Lieutenant, who
kills half the natives with his sword and is about to slay the Pirate
when he discovers that he is his long lost father," said the Idiot. "The
heroine then sings a pathetic love song about her Baboon Baby, in a
green light to the accompaniment of a lot of pink satin monkeys banging
cocoa-nut shells together. This drowsy lullaby puts the Lieutenant and
his forces to sleep and the curtain falls on their capture by the
Pirate and his followers, with the chorus singing:

"Hooray for the Pirate bold,
With his pockets full of gold,
He's going to marry to-morrow.
To-morrow he'll marry,
Yes, by the Lord Harry,
He's go-ing--to-marry--to-mor-row!
And that's a thing to doodle-doodle-doo.

"There," said the Idiot, after a pause. "How is that for a first act?"

"It's about as lucid as most of them," said the Poet, "but after all you
have got a story there, and you said you didn't need one."

"I said you didn't need one to start with," corrected the Idiot. "And
I've proved it. I didn't have that story in mind when I started. That's
where the easiness of the thing comes in. Why, I didn't even have to
think of a name for the heroine. The inspiration for that popped right
out of Mr. Brief's mouth as smoothly as though the name Drivelina had
been written on his heart for centuries. Then the