The Ersatz Elevator (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #6)

by Lemony Snicket

The word “bubble” is in the dictionary, for instance, as is the word “peacock,” the word “vacation,” and the words “the” “author’s” “execution” “has” “been” “canceled,” which make up a sentence that is always pleasant to hear.

She was scarcely larger than a salami.

A SALAMI IM CRYING

Arguing with somebody is never pleasant, but sometimes it is useful and necessary to do so. Just the other day, for example, it was useful and necessary for me to have an unpleasant argument with a medical student, because if he hadn’t let me borrow his speedboat I would now be chained inside a very small, waterproof room, instead of sitting in a typewriter factory typing out this woeful tale.

There is nothing particularly wrong with salmon, of course, but like caramel candy, strawberry yogurt, and liquid carpet cleaner, if you eat too much of it you are not going to enjoy your meal.

“And Sunny,” Jerome continued. “The sharp-toothed mountain lion can be found in a number of countries in North America. Would you be afraid if you met a mountain lion?” “Netesh,” Sunny said, which meant something like “Of course I would! Mountain lions are wild animals,”

They stopped and listened at this door, and heard a man’s voice call out, “I’m going to take a shower, Mother,” and Sunny shook her head. “Mineak,” she whispered, which meant “Gunther would never take a shower. He’s filthy.”

“Ersatz” is a word that describes a situation in which one thing is pretending to be another,

“Armani,” Sunny offered, holding up an armful of Jerome’s neckties.

One of the greatest myths in the world—and the phrase “greatest myths” is just a fancy way of saying “big fat lies”—is that troublesome things get less and less troublesome if you do them more and more.

Do you think you can bite your way back down?” “Geronimo!” Sunny cried, which meant something like “I don’t need to bite my way back down,” and the youngest Baudelaire was right. She took a deep breath, and threw herself down the dark passageway,

The French expression “cul-de-sac” describes what the Baudelaire orphans found when they reached the end of the dark hallway, and like all French expressions, it is most easily understood when you translate each French word into English. The word “de,” for instance, is a very common French word, so even if I didn’t know a word of French, I would be certain that “de” means “of.” The word “sac” is less common, but I am fairly certain that it means something like “mysterious circumstances.” And the word “cul” is such a rare French word that I am forced to guess at its translation, and my guess is that in this case it would mean “At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment,” so that the expression “cul-de-sac” here means “At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment of mysterious circumstances.”

“I’m poking every inch of these walls,” Klaus said grimly, “and there’s no door or stairway or curve or anything. It’s a dead end, all right. There’s no other word for it. Actually, there’s a French expression for ‘dead end,’ but I can’t remember what is.”

“The time was ripe for your inventing skills!” Klaus cried. “The solution was right on the tip of our tongs!”

A+ setup, A+ execution

People have always said it’s haunted here on the empty lot where the Baudelaire mansion burned down, and now I know it’s true.”

WHAT