In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone
since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at
least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the
ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual "There!"--yet
at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the
conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he
is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness
glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these
occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself
rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted
to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else
he knows.

Quiz