Peeps at People

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About this book

A tailor's cheerful excuses can undo an angry customer's best preparations for a quarrel. Robert Cortes Holliday turns this small encounter into one of the humorous portraits gathered in Peeps at People. These short essays and sketches watch people at work, in conversation and among acquaintances, finding comedy in the gap between their self-confidence and their conduct. Most first appeared in the Saturday Magazine of the New York Evening Post.

The opening preface makes a joke of a writer repeatedly offering a publisher pieces from an ever earlier stage of his career. Elsewhere, a photograph business manager tells Bill about hard times, family help and his return to New York, while a checkers player answers defeat with a fresh boast. The appeal lies in the voices: repeated phrases, sudden enthusiasms and elaborate explanations make ordinary exchanges into compact character studies.