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The Anchovy in Literature
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H. G. Wells, from The New Machiavelli (1911)

We do not understand what we have to do with doctrine, whatever that might be. — The Schoolmarm

From Part III:

. . . I didn't at first see the connection between systematic social reorganisation and arbitrary novelties in dietary and costume, just as I didn't realise why the most comprehensive constructive projects should appear to be supported solely by odd and exceptional personalities. On one of these evenings a little group of rather jolly-looking pretty young people seated themselves for no particular reason in a large circle on the floor of my study, and engaged, so far as I could judge, in the game of Hunt the Meaning, the intellectual equivalent of Hunt the Slipper. It must have been that same evening I came upon an unbleached young gentleman before the oval mirror on the landing engaged in removing the remains of an anchovy sandwich from his protruded tongue — visible ends of cress having misled him into the belief that he was dealing with doctrinally permissible food. . . .

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