Its singularly serendipitous nature lends itself to romantic novelisation (book cross-dressing, as it were) or Ludlumesque thrillers (book double-crossing, so to speak).

The Does Macy's tell Gimbel's? gag has been a standard one in New York for many years. It was somewhat shattered last night at the Copacabana, when two young couples were seated at a ringside table and conversed at great length....Well, Macy's may not tell Gimbel's, said one of the young men, But Bloomingdale's does.

Or it might be a magnificent pall, in the days in which this garment had lost its primitive character, that taxed the skill and the patience of the fair needlewoman. It was about the year a.d. 601 that Pope Gregory [I] sent two archbishop's palls into England; the one for London, which see was afterwards removed to Canterbury, and the other to York.

He saw the old man lift his head from some writing so sharp that his nose-nippers fell off …