secernment

Updated: June 5, 2025

But with the universal use of cosmetics and the consequent secernment of soul and surface, upon which, at the risk of irritating a reader, I must again insist, all those old properties that went to bolster up the ordinary novel the trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determined curve of the chin, the nervous trick of biting the moustache, aye, and the hectic spot of red on either cheek will be made spiflicate, as the puppets were spiflicated by Don Quixote.

Sir Max Beerbohm - The Works of Max Beerbohm