Lighter Than You Think

<p>SOME JOKER in the dear dead days now virtually beyond recall won two-bit immortality by declaring that What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.</p><p></p><p>Which is of course Victorian malarkey. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel. Or perhaps a good cigar-shaped spaceship. There's a fortune waiting somewhere out in space for the man who can go out there and claim it. A fortune! And if you think I'm just talking through my hat lend an ear ... </p><p></p><p>Joyce started the whole thing. Or maybe I did when for the umpteenth time I suggested she should marry me. She smiled in a way that showed she didn't disapprove of my persistence but loosed a salvo of devastating negatives.</p>