I've been reading an old favourite while I'm on holiday, Jeeves in the Offing, by Sir P G Wodehouse. I cannot resist quoting from the end of Chapter Three, a paragraph about the "loony doctor", Sir Roderick Glossop:
"We seated ourselves and had just started sipping, when the butler came out of the house bearing a bowl of fruit and hove to beside the table with it.
Well, when I say the term 'butler', I use the term loosely. He was dressed like a butler and he behaved like a butler, but in the deepest and truest sense of the word he was not a butler.
Reading from left to right, he was Sir Roderick Glossop ... there could not be two men with that vast bald head and those bushy eyebrows, and it would be deceiving the customer to say that I remained unshaken".
Classic Wodehouse. The Master of the English Language. Ever notice how sparingly he uses colons and semi-colons? There's a lesson for us today indeed.
Friday, 1 October 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
No comments :
Post a Comment