[12] Perfectly good seventeenth-century English.
[13] Even the French write, invariably, un coup d’Etat, le conseil d’Etat, but l’état des coups, l’état du conseil.
[14] The Concise Oxford Dictionary.
[15] The reference here is to a story illustrative of the tricks which a man’s memory sometimes plays him:
Reading in the Morning Post, that Mr. John Brown, of 500 Clarges Street, is shortly leaving for Uganda on a big-game-shooting expedition and would like a gentleman to come with him, sharing expenses, thought no more of the advertisement and went about his day’s work. That night he dined intemperately. On being ejected from his club, he was bound for home when he recalled the forgotten advertisement and decided that something must be done about it.
Driving to 500 Clarges Street, he demanded to see Mr. John Brown.
“Are you Mr. John Brown?” he enquired of a sleepy and illhumoured figure in pyjamas.
“I am, sir,” answered John Brown.
“You’re the Mr. John Brown going shooting Uganda?”
“Yes.”