John is a man

'Those sketches look rather footy,' I said; 'but I had to put something in my notebook.'

Furrowing a giant oak, and javelining With darted spikes and splinters of the wood

[…] and the “good old crusted” actor, forgetting the lines of the author, used without compunction to cover his discomfiture by inventing a text of his own–an achievement known as ponging.