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unearths some literary gems.
From Love Insurance, by Earl Derr Biggers:
***Mr. Thacker was cold and matter-of-fact, like a card index.***He continued to crank with agonized face. In the course of a few minutes, sounds of a terrific disturbance came from inside the car. Still, like a hurdy-gurdy musician, the man cranked."I say," Minot inquired, "has your machine got the Sextette from Lucia?""Well, there's been a lot of things wrong with it," the man replied, "but I don't think it's had that yet."[Cf. Cranking a Metz engine as as musical effect, seen recently in another snippet from this same era (ca. 1914).]***The dimple, in repose now, became the champion dimple of the world.***And, every few feet, Mr. Minot came upon "The Oldest House in San Marco."[Btw, this fictional town of San Marco, Florida, seems from various clues to probably be based on St. Augustine.]***Miss Meyrick presented her father and her aunt, and that did not tend to lighten the formality. Icicles, both of them, though stocky puffing icicles.***"Ever hear of Cotrell's Ink Eraser? Nothing ever written Cotrell can't erase. Will not soil or scratch the paper. If the words Cotrell has erased were put side by side—"[later]"I rigged up a big electric sign in Times Square and all night long I had an electric Cotrell's erasing indiscreet sentences."***"Her lines are good, but somehow—it's really a great problem to me—she doesn't sound human and natural when she gets them off. I looked up her beauty doctor and asked him if he couldn't put a witty gleam in her eye, but he told me he didn't care to go that far in correcting Mrs. Bruce's Maker."[Btw, the speaker is a hired wit who "ghostwrites" repartee for a society lady. Then--precursing my short story "Get It in Writing," in which the protag finds himself concurrently ghostwriting memoirs for two rival artists--the hired wit takes on another client, who is the chief social rival of the first. (Then, on the evening they're going head-to-head [SPOILER], he accidently gives them both the same script!)]***Minot hesitated. Ought he to leave the scene of action? Of action? He glanced about him. There was less action here than in a Henry James novel.***"I can talk as we walk along," said Trimmer, and proved it.***"One condition I attach. Ask no questions. Let us go out into the night unburdened with your interrogation points."***"What is this—a comic opera or a town? You are managing editor, Harry. I shall be city editor. Is there a city to edit? No matter."***"Don't look a gift bill in the treasury number."***He wore an orange and purple dressing-gown with a floral design no botanist could have sanctioned—the sort of dressing-gown that Arnold Bennett, had he seen it, would have made a leading character in a novel.***A deathly silence fell. Only a little traveling clock on the mantel was articulate.***
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