Friday, January 25, 2019

He made his opinion clear

It is one of the drawbacks to the historian's task that in recording dialogue between his characters he must select and abridge, giving merely the gist of their remarks and not a full stenographic transcript It will be enough to say, therefore, that Lord Blicester, touching on his nephew's moral and spiritual defects, left nothing unspoken. The word "wastrel" occurred with some frequency, as did the adjective "hopeless." By the time he had rounded into his peroration, the conclusion anyone hearing it would have come to was that it was a mystery how such a despicable member of the human family as Frederick Fotheringway Widgeon had even been allowed inside a respectable establishment like Barribault's Hotel.

(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

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