"The more I see of America," sighed Archie, "the more it amazes me. All you birds seem to have been doing things from the cradle upwards. I wish I could do things!"
"Well, why don't you?"
"Archie flicked the ash from his cigarette into the finger-bowl. "Oh, I don't know, you know," he said, "Somehow, none of our family ever have. I don't know why it is, but whenever a Moffam starts out to do things he infallibly makes a bloomer. There was a Moffam in the Middle Ages who had a sudden spasm of energy and set out to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, dressed as a wandering friar. Rum ideas they had in those days."
"Did he get there?"
"Absolutely not! Just as he was leaving the front door his favorite hound mistook him for a tramp - or a varlet, or a scurvy knave, or whatever they used to call them at the time - and bit him in the fleshy part of the leg."
"Well, at least he started."
"Enough to make a chappie start, what?"
(from The Indiscretions of Archie, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
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