Sometimes a line, or a paragraph, in a book will leap out at you. It was innocuous enough when the author wrote it, but now it’s dated the book for good. I was leafing through Accounting For Murder, by Emma Lathen (1961), and came across this paragraph.

Stanley was delighted. He would no more have questioned the authority of Clarence Fortinbras to press him into service than he would have questioned the summons of his local draft board.

Within five years, that line was an anachronism.