Word: scotchmen
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...they traveled toward Peking. The Chinese grew testier. So did the British-they disparaged shark's-fin soup, complained of smelly peasants (like "putrefying garlic on a much-used blanket"), ridiculed the native opera ("the instrumental music, from its resemblance to the bagpipes, might be tolerated by Scotchmen; to others it was detestable"). Then, as they neared the walls of Peking, the troubled mandarins agreed that the troublesome ambassador might kneel before the Emperor on one knee and bow three times, repeating this homage thrice. The Canton trade, the British told themselves, was not worth any more appeasement...
There were gags of all nations. Hope joshed the British: "Churchill certainly travels; he's been in Casablanca more than Humphrey Bogart." He ragged the Scots: "That blackout's wonderful; you should see the Scotchmen running around developing film." The real show, however, was for the Yanks, and he knew what they wanted: "Were the soldiers at the last camp happy to see me! They actually got down on their knees. What a spectacle! What a tribute! What a crap game...
Pert, imaginative, Wisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge is, as he likes to say, the only man ever to buy a business from five Jews and sell it to seven Scotchmen at a profit. The business was Chicago's Schlesinger & Mayer department store, sold to Carson Pirie Scott & Co. Harry Selfridge also made $1,000,000 from Marshall Field & Co., went to England with his profits. In 1909 he amazed Londoners with his magnificent effrontery by setting up a department store on Oxford Street, running it in the breeziest American tradition...
From the only man who ever bought a business* from five Jews and sold it to seven Scotchmen at a profit, this was a dire prophecy. Yet the pert, imaginative magnifico-who cleaned up a cool million in Chicago's Marshall Field & Co. and in 1909 impudently invaded London, with U. S. merchandising methods-had reason to be glum. Three weeks ago he resigned his chairmanship of Selfridge & Co., Ltd., great, gaunt, sprawling department store on Oxford Street west of Oxford Circus, took the inactive, empty post of president...
...that's not the real purpose of this letter. I simply want to give you a chance to chuckle with me over the humor of having Mr. Mussolini cast himself in the role of "mediator," and how reminiscent it is of the old story about the three Scotchmen in church: when they were confronted with the collection plate only a few pews away and getting closer, one of them, with great presence of mind, fainted, and the other two carried...