Explore "Pity the Poor Guest of Honor" by Oliver Herford on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Once when marooned on a small island in the midst of a turbulent sea of traffic, latitude Fifth Avenue, longitude Forty-second Street, I asked the governor of the island, a man of great stature and kingly mien, what he thought was the origin of the institution known as the Complimentary Banquet. Checking with an imperious gesture a monstrous traffic wave that seemed like to engulf us both the next moment, his voice came to me calm and reassuring above the tumult that surged and roared about us. "If it's a wake you do be meaning, sorr, sure it's as old as Ireland itself, it is!"
And the Traffic Cop was right.