A Day’s Work

Memorable passages from the pulp detective stories of Robert Leslie Bellem (1902-1968):

  • “There were tears brimming on her azure peepers, and tremulous grief twisted her kisser.” (“Forgery’s Foil”)
  • “She wrapped her arms around my neck; glued her crimson kisser to my lips. She fed me an osculation that sent seven thousand volts of electricity past my tonsils.” (“Design for Dying”)
  • “And then, from the doorway, a gun barked: ‘Chow-chow!’ and I went drifting to dreamland.” (“Design for Dying”)
  • “The rod sneezed: ‘Chow! Ka-Chow!’ and pushed two pills through Reggie’s left thigh.” (“Murder Has Four Letters”)
  • “Against a backdrop of darkness the heater sneezed: Ka-Chowp! Chowp! Chowp! and sent three sparking ribbons of orange flame burning into the pillow.” (“Come Die for Me”)
  • “From the window behind her, a roscoe poked under the drawn blind. It went: ‘Blooey — Blooey — Blooey!’” (“Murder on the Sound Stage”)
  • “From the window that opened onto the roof-top sun deck a roscoe sneezed: Ka-Chow! Chowpf! and a red-hot hornet creased its stinger across my dome; bashed me to dreamland.” (“Lake of the Left-Hand Moon”)
  • “From the front doorway of the wigwam a roscoe stuttered: Ka-chow! Chow! Chow! and a red-hot slug maced me across the back of the cranium, knocked me into the middle of nowhere.” (“Killer’s Keepsake”)
  • “A while ago you mentioned my hardboiled rep. You said I’m considered a dangerous hombre to monkey with. Okay, you’re right. Now will you come along willingly or do I bunt you over the crumpet till your sneezer leaks buttermilk?” (“Murder Has Four Letters”)
  • “A thunderous bellow flashed from Dave Donaldson’s service .38, full at the prop man’s elly-bay. Welch gasped like a leaky flue, hugged his punctured tripes, and slowly doubled over, fell flat on his smeller. A bullet can give a man a terrific case of indigestion, frequently ending in a trip to the boneyard.” (“Diamonds of Death”)
  • “‘Dan Turner squalling,’ I yeeped. ‘Flag your diapers to Sylvia Hempstead’s igloo. There’s been a croaking.'” (“Come Die for Me”)

“From the doorway a roscoe said ‘Kachow!’ and a slug creased the side of my noggin. Neon lights exploded inside my think-tank. … She was as dead as a stuffed mongoose. … I wasn’t badly hurt. But I don’t like to be shot at. I don’t like dames to be rubbed out when I’m flinging woo at them.”

A Poem

Sydney Smith wrote a recipe for salad dressing:

Two boiled potatoes, strained through a kitchen sieve,
Softness and smoothness to the salad give;
Of mordant mustard take a single spoon —
Distrust the condiment that bites too soon;
Yet deem it not, thou man of taste, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
True taste requires it, and your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two well-boiled eggs.
Let onions’ atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, scarce suspected, animate the whole;
And lastly in the flavoured compound toss
A magic spoonful of anchovy sauce.
Oh, great and glorious! oh, herbaceous meat!
‘Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat.
Back to the world he’d turn his weary soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl.

In the late 19th century, such rhymes helped cooks to master recipes. When this one was reproduced in an 1871 cookbook, many committed it to memory.

In a Word

philomath
n. a lover of learning; a scholar

noddary
n. a foolish act

fedifragous
adj. contract-breaking

subitaneous
adj. sudden

In Fredric Brown’s 1954 short short story “Experiment,” Professor Johnson displays a brass cube and proposes to send it backward in time. An identical cube appears in his time machine at 2:55, and Johnson announces that at 3:00 he will complete the transaction by sending his own cube 5 minutes into the past.

A friend asks: What would happen if he changed his mind and didn’t send it?

“An interesting idea,” says the professor. “I had not thought of it, and it will be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not …”

“There was no paradox at all. The cube remained.

“But the entire rest of the Universe, professors and all, vanished.”

Tip

“We went back to England together. When we arrived at the customs shed, Syrie said: ‘Always choose the oldest customs official. No chance of promotion.'” — Somerset Maugham, quoting his wife

Another World

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You see, when you learn to read you will be born again into another world and it is a pity to be born again so young. I should put off reading, if I were you. As soon as you learn to read you will not see anything again quite as it is. It will all the time be altered by what you have read and you will never be quite alone again. I should stay by yourself a bit longer if I were you.

Rumer Godden, to her 4-year-old daughter Jane, 1939

Credit

Dedication of P.G. Wodehouse’s 1926 book The Heart of a Goof:

To
My Daughter
Leonora
Without Whose Never-Failing
Sympathy and Encouragement
This Book
Would Have Been Finished
in
Half the Time

Misc

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

An Irish riddle: Yonder he is through the stream, a man without a coat, a man without a belt, a man of hard slender legs, it is my woe that I cannot run. Death.

Good Point

I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?

— Lord Byron, letter to Thomas Moore, July 5, 1821