Mr. Mulliner Speaking

Mr. Mulliner, the chief raconteur of the Angler's Rest, unbosoms himself of nine more stories concerning the doings of his relatives, slightly apropos of various topics being discussed at the bar. In this volume we meet, among others, his nephew Archibald (“Even at the Drones Club, where the average of intellect is not high, it was often said of Archibald that, had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers.”), his cousin Cedric whom he never liked (“‘Tan shoes are not worn with morning clothes,’ said Cedric in a low, grave voice. He was deeply shaken.”) and his cousin once removed, Roberta (better known as Bobbie) Wickham (“‘Now, isn’t that an extraordinary thing?’ said Miss Wickham, meditatively. ‘Here have I lived all these years and never thought of getting a snake! ….There are the most tremendous possibilities in a snake. The diner-out’s best friend. Pop it on the table after the soup and be Society’s pet-’”) This book also contains what may, in the opinion of this reader, be the most evocative pair of sentences in the history of the written English language: “At this moment, however, the drowsy stillness of the summer afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. It was, as a matter of fact, only his hat dropping to the floor, but in the highly nervous state of mind into which he had been plunged by recent events it nearly deafened him.” - Summary by Zach Hoyt