Believe it or not, that’s the actual title of a book published in 1824. There are at least three remarkable things about this book.

First, allow me to share the title page with you.

WINE AND WALNUTS ;
OR
after Dinner Chit Chat
BY
EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE

CITIZEN AND DRY SALTER

SECOND EDITION
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL I
LONDON
PRINTED FOB LONGMAN HURST REES OEME BROWN AND
GREEN
PATERNOSTER ROW
1824

Chit Chat.I don’t think I knew chit chat was period.

But this: this kills me: Citizen and Dry Salter.

You OWN it Ephraim! Is it just me, or does that strike you as highly amusing?

More Words

If ever a man possessed a particular bent of mind from some inherent feeling I verily believe I may claim credence on asserting that I have experienced such an extraordinary faculty. But lest the assumption may appear proudly egotistical— nay savour too strongly of vanity, in this modest age be it known that my pretensions to notoriety for this singular gift are but on an humble score being neither more nor less than for possessing an inherent love for the PICTURESQUE. Now having said this much I will endeavour to show how this marvellous faculty had birth– call me egotist if it be your pleasure, for I am of the old school, and save a world of circumlocution…

Now, I would have sworn that ego-anything was not period. But apparently it is. And yet, if I had a heroine call someone an egotist, everyone would think of Freud.

Translation please?

And now, what the hell is this guy saying? My brain got all twisted up about ten words in. Allow me to translate:

I feel things more than most, and it’s gone all up in my brain and made me super smart. I’m serious. Not that I’m not vain or anything. Not compared to some of the blowhards these days. Everyone who knows me knows I’m smarter than any of those dodos from Oxford. Here’s my secret; I like pretty things. True statement. Now, listen up, because that’s why you’ll LOVE my stories. I am older than you. Hell, I’m older than your father. I know things you young hipsters don’t.

And that, my friends, took a LOT longer than I expected. That guy’s been in the wine. But then, as he goes on to say. He’s eighty years old.

I may just translate the whole damn book. This guy is funny.