One of the legendary characters from P.G. Wodehouse’s stories is Mister Mulliner. In this one, set in the bar parlor of the Angler’s Rest, he tells all about his nephew George. It begins with:
My nephew George (said Mr. Mulliner) was as nice a young fellow as you would ever wish to meet, but from childhood up he had been cursed with a terrible stammer. If he had had to earn his living, he would undoubtedly have found this affliction a great handicap, but fortunately his father had left him a comfortable income, and George spent a not uncomfortable life residing in the village where he had been born and passing his days in the usual country sports and his evenings in doing crossword puzzles.
By the time he was thirty he knew more about Eli, the prophet, Ra, the Sun God, and the bird Emu than anybody else in the county except Susan Blake, the vicar’s daughter, who had also taken up the solving of crossword puzzles and was the first girl in Worcestershire to find out the meaning of “stearine” and “crepuscular.”
It was his association with Miss Blake that first turned George’s thoughts to a serious endeavor to cure himself of his stammer. Naturally, with this hobby in common, the young people saw a great deal of one another, for George was always looking in at the vicarage to ask her if she knew a word of seven letters meaning “appertaining to the profession of plumbing,” and Susan was just as constant a caller at George’s cozy little cottage—being frequently stumped, as girls will be, by words of eight letters signifying “largely used in the manufacture of poppet valves.” The consequence was that one evening, just after she had helped him out of a tight place with the word “disestablishmentarianism,” the boy suddenly awoke to the truth and realized that she was all the world to him—or, as he put it to himself from force of habit, precious, beloved, darling, much-loved, highly esteemed or valued.
And yet, every time he tried to tell her so, he could get no farther than a sibilant gurgle which was no more practical use than a hiccup.
Listen to the rest of this delightful story here.
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