The Mislaid Charm

<b>From the front flap of the Prime Press first state dust jacket:</b> "Henry A. Pickett is a "little" man. And like most of the little men of this world, he is perpetually confused by the vast, sprawling, incomprehensible civilization which is his unchosen environment, and with which he forever and choicelessly contends. <p>But pity poor Henry! Not alone has he been flung willynilly, into a mad world; he runs headlong into the creature most dreaded by the timid man - a magnificent and commanding female. Every inch of Dorothy Guilford (and she stands five feet eleven inches, and weighs one hundred and fifty pounds) is vibrant with self-confidence and strength. Down upon Pickett sweeps this breath-taking vision like the fate(doom, if you're a misogamist!) that she is. <p>Even this daunting contretemps is dwarfed, however, when Pickett encounters the supernatural in the shape of a tribe of violently opinionated gnomes from up-state Pennsylvania, and becomes the unwitting repository of their tribal charm, and the object of a city-wide search on the part of the Miner Imps Little Mob. <p>Free of the control of its gnome-tribe, the suddenly emancipated charm reveals a personality of its own - unhappily, a somewhat half-witted one - and begins experimenting with its powers, experiments which convince not only Pickett but a considerable part of the adjacent population as well that all laws of logic are at least temporarily suspended. <p>But when Pickett's troubles come, they come in a flood - he who had never, previously, indulged in intoxicating liquors, gathers a package the like of which had never before been seen. The charm, refusing to lose its hour of liberty, keeps him from sinking beneath the rising tides of alcohol, but it can't keep him from getting completely plastered! <p>The recital of his whirling, bewildered journey through an utterly unpredictable environment, borne along these churning tides, is the story revealed in <i>The Mislaid Charm</i>, the account of Henry A. Pickett's wildest, most hilarious, and fateful night."