``I woke up this morning,'' Moreland said, ``paraphrasing Lewis Carroll. Do you want to hear the paraphrase?''

``Can I bear it?'' I asked, taking a final gulp of my drink, and handing him the empty glass.

``Just barely,'' he said, and repeated his paraphrase: ``The time has come,'' the walrus said, ``To speak of manic things, Of shots and shouts, and sealing dooms Of commoners and kings.''

Moreland fixed us each another drink, and said, ``For God's sake, tell me something truly amusing.''

``I'll try,'' I said, and sat for a moment thinking. ``Oh yes, the other day I reread some of Emerson's English Traits, and there was an anecdote about a group of English and Americans visiting Germany, more than a hundred years ago. In the railway station at Berlin, a uniformed attendant was chanting,' Foreigners this way! Foreigners this way'! One woman -- she could have been either English or American -- went up to him and said,' But you are the foreigners'.'' I took a deep breath and an even deeper swallow of my drink, and said, ``I admit that going back to Ralph Waldo Emerson for humor is like going to a modern musical comedy for music and comedy.''

``What's the matter with the music?'' Moreland asked.

``It doesn't drown out the dialogue,'' I explained.

``Let's talk about books,'' Moreland said. ``I am told that in America you have non books by non writers, brought out by non publishers for non readers. Is it all non-fiction?''