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Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946

"Penrod and Sam"

It expanded to horrible size, growing
mountainous; it turned into a volcano in the tropics, and yet it
stared at him, indubitably an Eye implacably hostile to all
rights of privacy forever. Penrod blinked and clinched his
eyelids to be rid of this dual image, and he managed to shake off
the volcano. Then, lowering the angle of his glance, he saw
something most remarkable--and curiously out of place.
An inverted white soup-plate was lying miraculously balanced upon
the back of a pew a little distance in front of him, and upon the
upturned bottom of the soup-plate was a brown cocoanut. Mildly
surprised, Penrod yawned, and, in the effort to straighten his
eyes, came to life temporarily. The cocoanut was revealed as
Georgie Bassett's head, and the soup-plate as Georgie's white
collar. Georgie was sitting up straight, as he always did in
church, and Penrod found this vertical rectitude unpleasant. He
knew that he had more to fear from the Eye than Georgie had, and
he was under the impression (a correct one) that Georgie felt on
intimate terms with it and was actually fond of it.


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