Books: Cheerful Yarns

DOCTOR DOGBODY'S LEG—James Norman Hall—Little, Brown ($2.50).

The celebrated tales of Baron Munchausen (published in 1785) are excellent and resourceful lies, but they lack conviviality. This could never be said of the stories of F. Dogbody, Surgeon, late of His Majesty's Navy, who passed his evenings after 1817 in the Cheerful Tortoise, Will Tunn Prop., Portsmouth. Doctor Dogbody's stories concerning his peg leg and how he acquired it were told over fine Port Royal rum to a circle of old seamen like himself, fully able to check his reminiscences of ships, battles, commanders. Such...

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