P. G. Wodehouse

“ Shakespeare speaks of the ecstasy of love, and Shakespeare knew what he was talking about. Ah, better to live in the lowliest cot, Garroway, than pine in a palace alone. In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed: in war he mounts the warrior's steed. In halls, in gay attire is seen; in hamlets, dances on the green. Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, and men below and saints above; for love is heaven and heaven is love. Get these simple facts into your silly fat head, Garroway, and you may turn out a poem worth reading. ”

“ If your name is Finch, why pretend that it is Winch? I don't like this shiftiness. It does not come well from a Westerner. Leave this petty shilly-shallying to Easterners like that vile rabble of widow-and-orphan oppressors upstairs, all of whom have got incipient Bright's Disease. If your name is Pinch, admit it like a man. Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay," said Mr. Waddington a little severely, holding a match to the fountain-pen which, as will happen to the best of us in moments of emotion, he had mistaken for his cigar.
"As a matter of fact, I'm not," said George. ”

“ Sigsbee H. Waddington could not bring the Prince of Wales home to dinner and get away with it. And when he drags in and lays on the mat a specimen—I use the word in the kindliest spirit—like you, and does so, moreover, five minutes before the start of a formal dinner-party, thus upsetting the seating arrangements and leading to black thoughts in the kitchen, can you blame his wife for not fawning on you? And on top of that you pretend to be an artist."
"I am an artist," said George, with a flicker of spirit. ”

“ For a moment, all Hamilton Beamish felt was that almost ecstatic relief which comes over the man of sensibility when he finds that a pretty girl has an attractive voice. Too many times in his career he had admired girls from afar, only to discover, when they spoke, that they had voices like peacocks calling up the rain. The next instant, however, he had recognised that his companion was suffering, and his heart was filled with a blend of compassion and zeal. Her pain aroused simultaneously the pity of the man and the efficiency of the efficiency expert. ”

“ Hamilton Beamish stopped, looked and listened. A girl had emerged from a clump of rhododendrons, and was stealing softly round the lawn towards the dining-room window.
Girlhood is the season of dreams. To Fanny Welch, musing over the position of affairs after Sigsbee H. Waddington had given her her final instructions, there had come a quaint, fantastic thought, creeping into her mind like a bee into a flower—the thought that if she got to the house an hour earlier than the time he had mentioned, it might be possible for her to steal the necklace and keep it for herself. ”

“ Mr. Waddington paused. His forehead wrinkled. He snatched the bundle of stock from his companion's grasp and made a movement towards his pocket. "No!" he said, "No! I can't do it. I can't let you have it, after all!"
"Oh, sir!"
"No. It's too big."
"Oh, but, Mr. Waddington...."
Sigsbee H. Waddington seemed to come out of a trance. He shook himself and stared at the policeman as if he were saying "Where am I?" He heaved a deep, remorseful sigh.
"Isn't money the devil!" he said. "Isn't it terrible the way it saps all a fellow's principles and good resolutions! ”

“ This something was a long, stringy policeman: and, though Mrs. Waddington had met this policeman only once in her life, the circumstances of that meeting had been such that the memory of him had lingered. She recognised him immediately: and, strong woman though she was, wilted like a snail that has just received a handful of salt between the eyes.
"What's up?" inquired Lord Hunstanton. He, too, turned. "Oh, what ho! the constabulary!"
Officer Garroway was gazing at Mrs. Waddington with an eye from which one of New York's Bohemian evenings had wiped every trace of its customary mildness. ”

“ A poem should be a thing of beauty and charm and sentiment, and have as its theme the sweetest and divinest of all human emotions—Love. Only Love can inspire the genuine bard. Love, Garroway, is a fire that glows and enlarges, until it warms and beams upon multitudes, upon the universal heart of all, and so lights up the whole world and all Nature with its generous flames. ”

“ Those of the readers of this chronicle who have ever thrown pepper in a policeman's face, and skimmed away down a fire-escape are aware that fire-escapes, considered as a refuge, have the defect of being uncomfortably exposed to view. At any moment, felt Mrs. Waddington, the policeman might come to the edge of the roof and look down: and to deceive him into supposing that she was merely an ash-can or a milk-bottle was, she knew, beyond her histrionic powers.
The instinct for self-preservation not only sharpens the wits, but at the same time dulls the moral sensibility. ”

“ I tell thee Love is nature's second sun, Garroway, causing a spring of virtues where he shines. All love is sweet, given or returned. Common as light is love, and its familiar voice wearies not ever. True love's the gift which God has given to man alone beneath the heaven. It is not—mark this, Garroway—it is not fantasy's hot fire, whose wishes soon as granted die. It liveth not in fierce desire, with fierce desire it does not die. It is the secret sympathy, the silver link, the silken tie, which heart to heart and mind to mind in body and in soul can bind."
"Yes, sir. ”

“ Hamilton Beamish's expression grew graver, and he looked at his friend with sudden suspicion. "Tell me all, George. It is idle to pretend that the name is strange to you. Obviously it has awakened deep and unpleasant memories. I trust, George, that this is not some poor girl with whose happiness you have toyed in the past, some broken blossom that you have culled and left to perish by the wayside?" ”

“ There are moments when even the coolest-headed efficiency expert finds it hard to maintain his poise. Hamilton Beamish was definitely taken aback: and, had he been a lesser man, one would have said that he became for an instant definitely pop-eyed. Apart from the fact that he had been thinking of her and thinking of her tenderly, there was the embarrassment of standing side by side with a strange girl on a door-step. In such a crisis it is very difficult for a man to know precisely how to behave. Should he endeavour to create the illusion that he is not aware of her presence? ”

“ George did not hesitate. Seizing the table-cloth, he swept it off in a hideous whirl of apple-pie, ice water, bread, potatoes, salad and poulet rôti. He raised it on high, like a retarius in the arena, and brought it down in an enveloping mass on the policeman's head. Interested cries arose on all sides. The Purple Chicken was one of those jolly, informal restaurants in which a spirit of clean Bohemian fun is the prevailing note, but even in the Purple Chicken occurrences like this were unusual and calculated to excite remark. Four diners laughed happily, a fifth exclaimed "Hot pazazas!" ”

“ Gallagher! That was the name. Not Mulcahy. Not Garrity. Not Murphy. Gallagher!
Like many another good man before him, Sigsbee Waddington chafed at the fat-headed imbecility with which Memory can behave. Why should Memory have presented to his notice futile Mulcahys and Garritys and Murphys when what he had been asking for was Gallagher? Wasting his time!
But it was not too late. If he went straight back to New York now and resumed his quest, all might yet be well. And Fortune had, he perceived, presented him with the most admirable excuse for going straight back to New York. ”

“ Did you think all this out by yourself?"
"Entirely by myself."
"You're too clever for one man. You ought to incorporate."
It seemed to Hamilton Beamish that the moment had arrived to speak out frankly and without subterfuge, to reveal in the neatest phrases at his disposal the love which had been swelling in his heart like some yeasty ferment ever since he had first taken a speck of dust out of this girl's eye on the door-step of Number Sixteen, East Seventy-Ninth Street. ”

“ He gazed at Fanny very much as George Finch had gazed at Molly Waddington, Hamilton Beamish at Madame Eulalie, and as a million other young men in New York and its outskirts were or would shortly be gazing at a million other young women. Love had come rather late to Frederick Mullett, for his had been a busy life, but it had come to stay. ”

“ Waddington went further. Her whole attitude betrayed her belief that the cat, on inspecting George, had been disappointed. Seeing what it had got, her manner suggested, it had given him the look of chagrin which cats give when conscious of effort wasted and had gone elsewhere to try again. A lover, counting the days until the only girl in the world shall be his, will see sweetness and light in practically everything: but George Finch, despite his most earnest endeavours, had been compelled to draw the line at Mrs. Waddington. ”

“ But in a bustling city like New York it is rarely that the artist is permitted to concentrate for long without interruption. A telephone-bell broke raspingly upon the stillness: and the first sensation of pleasure which Mrs. Waddington had experienced for a very long time came to her as she realised that the instrument was ringing in the passage outside and not in the room. With something of the wild joy which reprieved prisoners feel at the announcement of release she heard the butler rise. ”

“ One may go still further—a girl of espièglerie and je ne sais quoi. She was dressed, as Hamilton Beamish's experienced eye noted in one swift glance, in a delightful two-piece suit composed of a smart coat in fine quality repp, lined throughout with crêpe-de-chine, over a dainty long-sleeved frock of figured Marocain prettily pleated at the sides and finished at the neck with a small collar and kilted frill: a dress which, as every schoolboy knows, can be had in beige, grey, mid-grey, opal, snuff, powder, burnt wood, puce, brown, bottle, almond, navy, black and dark Saxe. ”

“ For George Finch was conscious of not looking his best. Nothing so disorders the outer man as the process of being arrested and hauled to the coop by a posse of New York gendarmes. George's collar was hanging loose from its stud: his waistcoat lacked three buttons: and his right eye was oddly discoloured where a high-minded officer, piqued by the fact that he should have collected crowds by scattering dollar-bills and even more incensed by the discovery that he had scattered all he possessed and had none left, had given him a hearty buffet during the ride in the patrol-wagon. ”

“ Molly fiddled with the trimming of her dressing-jacket. This was not the first time the subject had come up between her stepmother and herself. A remark like the one just recorded was Mrs. Waddington's idea of letting fall a quiet hint.
"Well...." said Molly.
"What do you mean, well?"
"Well, don't you think he's rather stiff?"
"Stiff!"
"Don't you find him a little starchy?"
"If you mean that Lord Hunstanton's manners are perfect, I agree with you."
"I'm not sure that I like a man's manners to be too perfect," said Molly meditatively. "Don't you think a shy man can be rather attractive?" ”

“ The first thing a poet needs is to develop his powers of observation. How does it strike you?"
The policeman gazed mildly at the horizon. His eye flitted from the roof-tops of the city, spreading away in the distance, to the waters of the Hudson, glittering in the sun. He shifted his Adam's apple up and down two or three times, as one in deep thought.
"It looks very pretty, sir," he said at length.
"Pretty?" Hamilton Beamish's eyes flashed. You would never have thought, to look at him, that the J. in his name stood for James and that there had once been people who had called him Jimmy. ”

“ I thought you had forgotten all about me."
"What, after all those beautiful letters you wrote!"
"Boy and girl affair," babbled George.
"Was it, indeed!"
"But, May!..."
Hamilton Beamish had been listening to these exchanges with a rapidly rising temperature. His heart was pounding feverishly in his bosom. There is no one who becomes so primitive, when gripped by love, as the man who all his life has dwelt in the cool empyrean of the intellect. ”

“ There are few things more embarrassing to a shy and sensitive young man than to be present at a dinner-party where something seems to tell him he is not really wanted. The something that seemed to tell George Finch he was not really wanted at to-night's festive gathering was Mrs. Waddington's eye, which kept shooting down the table at intervals and reducing him to pulp at those very moments when he was beginning to feel that, if treated with gentle care and kindness, he might eventually recover. ”

“ As a married man, Winch—twice married, but my first wife, poor thing, passed away some years back—let me tell you something. To assert himself with his wife, to bend her to his will, if I may put it that way, a man needs complete financial independence. It is no use trying to bend your wife to your will when five minutes later you have got to try and wheedle twenty-five cents out of her for a cigar. Complete financial independence is essential, Pinch, and that is what I am on the eve of achieving. ”