Most Exalted Sir,–

It is with most habitually devout expressions of my sensitive respect that I approach the clemency of your masterful position with the self-dispraising utterance of my esteem, and the also forgotten-by-myself assurance that in my own mind I shall be freed from the assumption that I am asking unpardonable donations if I assert that I desire a short respite from my exertions; indeed, a fortnight’s holiday, as I am suffering from three boils, as per margin. I have the honorable delight of subscribing myself your exalted reverence’s servitor.

– Jonabol Panjamjaub

– An Indian clerk’s request for a holiday, quoted in William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892

“In addition to the regalement of the ear from the charm of style to his communication, the eye is gratified by a rough but graphic illustration of the three boils.”

In 1996, 21-year-old John Leonard saw a Pepsi ad that jokingly offered a Harrier fighter for 7 million “Pepsi points.” Under the contest rules, that should have required drinking 16.8 million cans of Pepsi, but Leonard found a loophole — he could earn the points by simply buying them for 10 cents each.

So on March 28 he delivered 15 original Pepsi points, plus a check for $700,008.50 to cover the remainder plus shipping and handling. And when Pepsi failed to deliver the jet, he sued.

He lost in the end — the court ruled that the ad didn’t constitute an offer — but Leonard can still argue that he was in the right. He claimed that a federal judge could not hear his case fairly, and that instead he should have faced a jury of “the Pepsi generation.”

(Thanks, Brendan.)

If this should meet the eye of Emma D—–, who absented herself last Wednesday from her father’s house, she is implored to return, when she will be received with undiminished affection by her almost heart-broken parents. If nothing can persuade her to listen to their joint appeal–should she be determined to bring their gray hairs with sorrow to the grave–should she never mean to revisit a home where she had passed so many happy years–it is at least expected, if she be not totally lost to all sense of propriety, that she will, without a moment’s further delay, send back the key of the tea-caddy.

– Advertisement, London newspaper, quoted in Jefferson Saunders, The Tin Trumpet, 1836

A lady wrote to her lover, begging him to send her some money. She added, by way of postcript, ‘I am so ashamed of the request I have made in this letter, that I sent after the postman to get it back; but the servant could not overtake him.’

– The Poetry and Varieties of Berrow’s Worcester Journal for 1828