Jerry of the Islands

It is a misfortune to some fiction-writers that fiction and unveracity in theaverage person’s mind mean one and the same thing. Several years ago Ipublished a South Sea novel. The action was placed in the Solomon Islands. The action was praised by the critics and reviewers as a highly creditable effortof the imagination. As regards reality—they said there wasn’t any. Of course,as every one knew, kinky-haired cannibals no longer obtained on the earth’ssurface, much less ran around with nothing on, chopping off one another’sheads, and, on occasion, a white man’s head as well.