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Stevenson, Robert Louis

"The Wrecker"

All your talents and
accomplishments come in. Here's a sketch
advertisement. Just run your eye over it. "SUN,
OZONE AND MUSIC! PINKERTON'S HEBDOMADARY PICNICS!"
(That's a good, catching phrase, "hebdomadary," though
it's hard to say. I made a note of it when I was
looking in the dictionary how to spell HECTAGONAL
'Well, you're a boss word,' I said. 'Before you're
very much older, I'll have you in type as long as
yourself.' And here it is, you see.) 'FIVE DOLLARS A
HEAD, AND LADIES FREE. MONSTER OLIO OF ATTRACTIONS.'
(How does that strike you?) 'FREE LUNCHEON UNDER THE
GREENWOOD TREE. DANCE ON THE ELASTIC SWARD. HOME
AGAIN IN THE BRIGHT EVENING HOURS. MANAGER AND
HONORARY STEWARD, H. LOUDON DODD, ESQ., THE WELL-KNOWN
CONNOISSEUR.'"
Singular how a man runs from Scylla to Charybdis! I was
so intent on securing the disappearance of a single
epithet that I accepted the rest of the advertisement
and all that it involved without discussion. So it
befell that the words "well-known connoisseur" were
deleted; but that H. Loudon Dodd became manager and
honorary steward of Pinkerton's Hebdomadary Picnics,
soon shortened, by popular consent, to The Dromedary.


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