unearths some literary gems.
***
Everything he saw in the streets announced that there was probably no such person as Mr. Pitsner. The very name shattered conviction.
***
He gave Inigo the impression that he was tired and that he knew a great deal. Possibly he was tired of knowing a great deal.
***
It was like lunching in a painted and gilded pandemonium.
***
“It must be because you’re—what is it?—an author—no, something worse than that—a man of let-ters.”
***
[Hat Eating, Fake Scots Accent-Style]
"If she's no gladly acceptin' him, ah'll go an' eat ma best bonnet."
***
He has published a very small book with an enormous title—it begins with Some Observations on the Parathyroid Glands, and then goes on and on, With Special Reference, and so forth.
***
Bonuses:
1. Some 500 pages into this book, I suddenly encountered, in relatively short order, two instances of someone who could "do the other thing" if they didn't like it. It was as if Clifford Witting's use of that phrase in my concurrent reading broke the ice on that previously unknown-to-me euphemistic variant.
2. I've (recently) become conversant with "Be your age!" to mean "Don't be ridiculous!"; but in this book we have "Be yourself!" as a variant.
3. An advertisement at the back of the original 1929 edition mentions an award called the Femina-Bookman Prize. It sounds like the sister of the Man Booker Prize!
