Hilaire Belloc

“ Mr. Higginson looked blankly at these men, then his eyes lit with anger. He was upon the very point of pouring out the whole story of his woes, when with that cold wind upon the heart which the condemned feel when they awake to reality upon the morning of execution, he remembered the cheque and was suddenly silent.
"You 'd better leave me!" he muttered. "You 'd better leave me, officer!"
"We were instructed, sir," began the senior man more respectfully than ever—then Professor Higginson bolted to refuge. ”

“ And having put the matter plainly and simply in such a fashion, Professor Higginson was silent.
"We quite understand, sir," said the senior of the two policemen gravely, sympathetically and respectfully. "There shan't be a word from us, sir, except of course——"
"No," said Professor Higginson firmly, "I am determined to do my duty in this matter; those whom it is proper to tell——"
At this moment Mrs. Randle, accompanied by a half-dressed servant, herself in an untied bonnet and somewhat out of breath, was heard at the open door with the reluctant and sleepy chemist, who was her medical adviser. ”

“ The Philosopher summoned the manhood to open the door and to face his accusers. They were not so startled as Mrs. Randle, who now came up with red and tearful face and somewhat out of breath (but her weeping largely overlain with indignation) to protest against the violation of her house.
The first of the policemen had hardly begun his formal questioning of Professor Higginson, when the second, looking a little closer, recognised his prey. ”

“ It was his boast that he could make and unmake men, and every politician in turn had blacked his boots, and he had made judges, and had at times decided upon peace and war. A powerful man; known to his gutter (before he bought his peerage) as Mr. Cake; a flabby man—and vulgar? Oh! my word!
This man at the other end of the wire knew much, too much, about George Babcock, and George Babcock knew that he knew it. ”

“ Unfortunately for civilisation, the superstitions of the Hypnotists, as we know, prevailed, and European science has grown ashamed since that day of its earlier and manlier standpoint. It has learnt to talk of auto-suggestion. It has fallen so low as to be interested in Lourdes.
Long before 1890 George Babcock's book was ruined abroad. But George Babcock was a man with a knowledge of the road, and while his reputation, dead upon the Continent, was at its height in England, he suddenly appeared, no longer as a theorist, but as a practising doctor in London. ”

“ All were curious, and by the time they had cheered him, the desperate man's relation had grown to be one of the most exact and beautiful little pieces of modern psychical experience conceivable. All the functionings of the subconscious man in the absence of a co-ordinating consciousness were falling into place, and the World that is beyond this World had been visited by the least likely of the sons of men. ”

“ That subtle air which no civilian can hope to possess, and by which, like the savages of Central Africa, the British police convey thought without words or message, acted at once upon the second man, and he adopted a manner of the utmost respect. ”

“ Higginson genuinely enough. His calendar had got a little muddled. "What 's to-day?" he said it easily. Then he saw a look on her face.
To-day the occasion was decisive and she stood firm.
There is a rank in society in which to forget the day of the week has a very definite connotation—it means ... it means something wrong with the Brain. Like a flash an avenue of salvation was suggested to the hunted man by Mrs. Randle's look. ”

“ Randle, please bring me some hot water."
And with these words the poor man dashed upstairs to his bedroom upon the first floor.
There are ways of defeating a woman's will when she has passed the age of forty, and these are described in books which deal either with an imaginary world of fiction or with a remote and unattainable past. No living man has dealt with the art, nor can wizards show you an example of it. ”

“ Then came the incorporation of the University of Ormeston, or, as people preferred to call it from those early days, the Guelph University, after the name of a patron, and the Prime Minister's private secretary had been sent to suggest, as the head of the Medical School, the name of George Babcock. ”