Bizarre (version 2)

MP3 Audio CD. Bizarre (version 2)

WHAT-NOTS




UNSOLICITED PERSONAL ADORNMENTS


Have you ever, on returning home from a round of calls, discovered upon your
coat a large, obtrusive spot?

Stricken with horror, you wonder how long it has been there. Did you
have this adjunct when you appeared before your wealthy aunt? That
severe female has never quite approved of you, and now this will finish
you as far as she is concerned. Did you exhibit yourself thus disgraced
at the Brumleighs'? You recollect that the maid eyed you queerly when
she opened the door, and that Mrs. B. had frequent recourse to her
lorgnettes. Then, too, both the Greens and the Worthingtons seemed a
little stiffer than usual.

How did you acquire it, anyhow? It looks and feels like ice cream of a
very rich quality; ice cream that has drippled merrily in leaps and
bounds. But you had no ice cream today. Neither did you talk to anyone
who was having ice cream.

Perhaps you have been struck by ice cream, just as people are struck by
lightning. The weather does such peculiar things nowadays.

I have a gray suit that is a constant prey to spots. Its frail color--a
sickly, betwixt-and-between shade, chosen in haste and repented of at
leisure--puts it utterly at their mercy. And they flock to it.

Things sticky and glutinous pounce avidly upon it; nor is its seat
reserved from paints and varnishes. Sauces afflict it. Oils take
advantage of its helplessness. Grass bedizens it with garish green.

I try my best to protect it--but what can I do? What am I against so
many? While I am rescuing my left elbow from the machinations of a
passing dish, I unwittingly suffer my right cuff to be enticed by the
gravy in my plate. As I walk discreetly in the middle of the sidewalk,