Reading a book where the principal characters are discussing a book titled 'Mock Turtle'. The basic outline of the book is decidedly hilarious - how long before an author comes up with a book based on it.
It is about a swimming instructor at a watering place, who had contracted such an unfortunate anti-nudity complex through watching so many bathing beauties that it completely inhibited all his natural emotions. So he got a job on a whaler and fell in love at first sight with an Eskimo, because she was such a beautiful bundle of garments. So he married her and brought her back to live in a suburb, where she fell in love with a vegetarian nudist. So then the husband went slightly mad and contracted a complex about giant turtles, and spent all his spare time staring into the turtle-tank at the Acquarium, and watching the strange, slow monsters swimming significantly round in their encashing shells.
Altogether, significant.
