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 insidious falsehood originated by women themselves, and by them insinuated, foisted, thrust, spread, and ingeniously promulgated into the ears of mankind by underhanded, secret, and deceptive methods, for the purpose of augmenting, furthering, and reinforcing their own charms and designs.

“Oh, I don’t know!” said I, vernacularly.

“Have you ever heard of Oratama?” he asked.

“Possibly,” I answered. “I seem to recall a toe dancer—or a suburban addition—or was it a perfume?—of some such name.”

“It is a town,” said Judson Tate, ‘‘on the coast of a foreign country of which you know nothing and could understand less. It is a country governed by a dictator and controlled by revolutions and insubordination. It was there that a great life-drama was played, with Judson Tate, the homeliest man in America, and Fergus McMahan, the handsomest adventurer in history or fiction, and Señorita Anahela Zamora, the beautiful daughter of the alcalde of Oratama, as chief actors. And, another thing—nowhere else on the globe except in the department of Trienta y tres in Uruguay does the chuchula plant grow. The products of the country I speak of are valuable woods, dyestuffs, gold, rubber, ivory, and cocoa.”

“I was not aware,” said I, “that South America produced any ivory.”

“There you are twice mistaken,” said Judson Tate, distributing the words over at least an octave of his wonderful voice. “I did not say that the country I spoke of was in South America—I must be careful, my dear man; I