We are dressing for the night's performance, and the girls again press me for stories about America. I'm a bit tired, because I had been out a good deal of last night, but being the natural show-off that I am, I draw in a breath and give it to them. "Oh, my friends, what a piece of work was Mike Fink! Big as a house and covered with enough hair to stuff all the mattresses in Paris! And that time when I first saw him, he bellowed..." WEEEEEE ... OOOOOP! LOOK AT ME! I'M A RING-TAILED ROARER! I'M THE ORIGINAL IRON-JAWED, BRASS-MOUNTED, COPPER-BELLIED CORPSE MAKER FROM THE WILDS OF ARKANSAS! I'M HALF HORSE AND HALF ALLIGATOR! I WAS BORN IN A CANE-BRAKE AND SUCKLED BY A MOUNTAIN LION! CAST YOUR EYES ON ME, AND LAY LOW AND HOLD YOUR BREATH FOR I'M ABOUT TO TURN MYSELF LOOSE. WEEEEE ... OOOOP! WEEEE ... OOOOP! 'Course, it was somewhat difficult for me to translate all that into standard French. The French, unlike us British, have an Academy that keeps an eye on how French should be spoken, and so you don't have all the dialects, accents, slang, and thus everybody speaks sort of the same.
