Motion-picture Memory

It's amazing, isn't it, the punch he packs into a single statement?!

"It was the fourth morning of the voyage. Of course, when this story is done in the movies they won't be satisfied with a bald statement like that; they will have a Spoken Title or a Cut-Back Sub-Caption or whatever they call the thing in the low dens where motion-picture scenario-lizards do their dark work, which will run:--

AND SO, CALM AND GOLDEN, THE DAYS WENT BY,

EACH FRAUGHT WITH HOPE AND YOUTH AND SWEETNESS,

LINKING TWO YOUNG HEARTS IN SILKEN FETTERS

FORGED BY THE LAUGHING LOVE-GOD.

and the males in the audience will shift their chewing gum to the other cheek and take a firmer grip of their companions' hands and the man at the piano will play "Everybody wants a key to my cellar" or something equally appropriate, very soulfully and slowly, with a wistful eye on the half-smoked cigarette which he has parked on the lowest octave and intends finishing as soon as the picture is over. But I prefer the plain frank statement that it was the fourth day of the voyage. That is my story and I mean to stick to it.

-P.G. Wodehouse, Three Men and a Maid