However one looks at it, therefore, I'd say that your horoscope for this autumn is the reverse of rosy. The inventory you acquired from me isn't going to be easy to move; you can't very well sidle up to people on the street and ask if they want to buy a hot Bodhisattva. Additionally, since you're going to be hors de combat pretty soon with sprue, yaws, Delhi boil, the Granville wilt, liver fluke, bilharziasis, and a host of other complications of the hex you've aroused, you mustn't expect to be lionized socially. My advice, if you live long enough to continue your vocation, is that the next time you're attracted by the exotic, pass it up -- it's nothing but a headache. As you can count on me to do the same.

compassionately yours,

S. J. Perelman.

The doors of the D train slid shut, and as I dropped into a seat and, exhaling, looked up across the aisle, the whole aviary in my head burst into song. She was a living doll and no mistake -- the blue-black bang, the wide cheekbones, olive flushed, that betrayed the Cherokee strain in her Midwestern lineage, and the mouth whose only fault, in the novelist's carping phrase, was that the lower lip was a trifle too voluptuous. From what I was able to gauge in a swift, greedy glance, the figure inside the coral colored boucle dress was stupefying.