Lines 887-888:  Since my biographer may be too staid or know too little

Too staid?  Know too little?  Had my poor friend precognized who that would be, he would have been spared those conjectures.  As a matter of fact I had the pleasure and the honor of witnessing (one March morning) the performance he describes in the next lines.  I was going to Washington and just before starting remembered he had said he wanted me to look up something in the Library of Congress.  I hear so clearly in my mind’s ear Sybil’s cool voice saying:  “But John cannot see you, he is in his bath”; and John’s raucous roar coming from the bathroom:  “Let him in, Sybil, he won’t rape me!”  But neither he nor I could recall what that something was.