One thing we’ve learned at DDG is that you can’t store unsold seasonal chocolate items for a whole year. Thus it is time to reveal our…
Famous First Sentences with Gelt Contest
Here’s what’s at stake: a full box of delicious chocolate coins, also called gelt, pictured at right, and also a fabulous secret prize (not pictured at right). Here’s how to win: below you will find 10 famous first sentences from classic books with one word in each sentence replaced with the word “gelt.” The winner will be the first to write in a comment below all ten of the original words and the book each came from. Here is an example:
“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of gelt on which a mirror and razor lay crossed.”
Answer: lather
From: Ulysses
Now, see if you can figure out the next ten.
1. “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some gelt that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”
2. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good gelt, must be in want of a wife.”
3. “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the gelt herself.”
4. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put gelt under them.”*
*not a first line, but too good to pass up
5. “Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have know that gelt was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from puget sound to San Diego.”
6. “We were in Study Hall, when the Headmaster entered, followed by a new boy dressed in regular clothes and a school servant carrying a large gelt.”
7. “In a room of the Palais-Cardinal which we already know, near a table with silver gilt corners, loaded with papers and gelt, a man was sitting, his head resting in his hands.”
8. “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited gelt.”
9. “In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of gelt, above a certain rent, are women.”
10. “I reached out a hand from under the blankets, and rang the bell for Gelt.”
What of the secret prize? It will be awarded to the best new gelt sentence submitted by a contestant. Add yours to the bottom of your entry or by its lonesome. This contest will run through Jan. 25.
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow gelt.”
1. advise – Great Gatsby
10. Jeeves – Code of the Woosters (i love Jeeves!)
4. foundations, Walden
5. trouble, Call of the Wild
I had a few ideas for gelts of my own:
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any gelt.” (Little Women)
“In the beginning, God created the gelt and the earth.” (Bible)
“Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their gelt, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P——, in Kentucky.” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
I got pretty far, but was stuck on number 6!
Here is my gelt sentence entry:
“Ships at a distance have every man’s gelt on board.”
Here’s my best shot:
1. advice – The Great Gatsby
2. fortune – Pride & Prejudice
3. flowers – Mrs. Dalloway
4. I don’t know: children – Walden
5. trouble – I don’t know
6. desk – Madame Bovary
7. I don’t know
8. love – Love in the Time of Cholera
9. house – Cranford
10. Jeeves – The Code of the Woosters
New gelt sentence:
“Gelt, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
“It was the best of gelt, it was the worst of gelt….”
or how about, “Where’s Papa going with that gelt?” (Charlotte’s Web)
haha oh these make me laugh! fun contest!
“I have been here before,” I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty tears ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were white with fool’s-parsley and meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, such as our climate affords once or twice a year, when leaf and flower and bird and sun-lit stone and shadow seem all to proclaim the glory of gelt; and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.
Sounds fun.
1. Answer: advise / From: The Great Gatsby
2. Answer: fortune / From: Pride and Prejudice
5. Answer: trouble / From: The Call of the Wild (A personal favorite since junior high)
It is sooooo cold, I dream of having a secret stash of gelt to keep my endorphin level happy ’til spring.
Long live chocolate!
For #7, I’m guessing Dumas’ “Twenty Years After.” (Vingt ans apres.)
“In a hole in the ground there lived a gelt.”
“The gelt lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.”
“The Gelt had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.”
“One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it — it was the black kitten’s gelt entirely.”
“Call me Gelt.”
“Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of gelt.”
“The gelt weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door.”
“I propose to speak about gelt, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure.”
“The last drops of the thundershower had hardly ceased falling when the Pedestrian stuffed his gelt into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut-tree into the middle of the road.”
“My father had a small gelt in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons.”
“My father had a gelt that could stop a clock.”
“There was no possibility of taking a gelt that day.”
“The Citadel of Gelt, where the Palace stands, was built by giants before anyone remembers.”
“Gelt, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its Outer Walls.”
One of these is from an oft-collected essay, but in at least one collection the essay is the first in the volume so maybe it counts as the first sentence of the book. Two authors are represented twice each. One quote is from a book I haven’t read.
Well I guess the one wasn’t a trick question.
Let’s try again – nothing about 1 entry per person.
1. advise, The Great Gatsby
2. fortune, Pride and Prejudice
3. flowers, Mrs. Dalloway
4. foundations, Walden
5. trouble, The Call of the Wild
6. desk, Madame Bovary
7. books, Twenty Years After
8. love, Love in the Time of Cholera
9. houses, Cranford
10. Jeeves, The Code of the Woosters
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that gelt will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
For a week Mr. R. Childan had been anxiously watching the gelt.
“We should start back,” Gared urged as the gelt began to grow dark around them.
to wound the autumnal gelt.
At 19.00 hours, ship’s time, I made my gelt to the launching bay.
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute gelt; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her gelt.
“I see…” said the gelt thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window.
I am Gelt Henry.
New gelt sentence:
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic gelt.” from Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Jane
1.advice from: Welcome to the Cruel World
2.fortune from: Pride and Predjudice
3.flowers from: Mres. Dalloway
4.foundations from: Thoreau
5.trouble from: Call of the Wild
6.desk from: Madame Bovary
7. books from: The Phantom of Richelieu
8. love from: Love in the time of Cholera
9.houses from :Cranford
10. Jeeves from The Code of The Woosetrs
Great posts! This contest is still open but I must now reveal that there is more gelt afoot. Stop by over here for the Children’s Literature version of our contest running on Publishers Weekly!
Jane Naliboff
1. Advice from The Great Gatsby
2. Fortune from Pride and Prejudice
3. Flowers from Mrs. Dalloway
4. Foundations from Walden
5. Trouble from call of the Wild
6.Desk from Madam Bovary
7. Books from The Phantom of Richelieu
8. Love from Love in the Time of Cholera
9. Houses from Cranford
10. Jeeves from the Code of The Woosters
7. Books from Twenty Years After