Thomas Anstey Guthrie

“ If you were to hand me your portemonnaie now, full of notes and gold, and let me walk into the street with it, do you doubt that I should return? Speak, Tomkins!
Mr T. Assuredly not; but so, too, would this gentleman. (To me, as Mr Johnson sneered a doubt.) Here, you. Sir, take this portemonnaie out into the street for five minutes or so, I trust to your honour to return it intact. (After I had emerged triumphantly from this severe ordeal of my bonâ fide.) Aha, Johnson! am I the judge of men or not? ”

“ Thus, through my presence of mind in boldly grappling with the nettle, I turned what might have been a disaster into a conspicuous triumph, for all the company, seeing the favour I was in with such a big wig as Hon'ble Cummerbund, listened to me with spell-bound enchantment, especially my friend Howard's sprightly young sister, a damsel of distinguished personal attractiveness, who was seated on my other side. ”

“ It is true that, at certain seasons, the ostentatious favours she would squander upon other young masculine boarders in my presence did reduce me to the doleful dump of despair, so that even the birds and beasts of forest shed tears at my misery, and frequently at meal-times I have sought to move her to compassion by neighing like horse, or by the incessant rolling of my visual organs ”

“ What an awfully old ass you have been, Jab, to go and blurt out everything in print—about your breach of promise case, and getting to know us, and—worst of all—being merely a bogey prince. Naturally, we don't care about being made to look fools. The dear old Mater, you know, is one of those simple, trusting natures that, if they once discover they have been taken in by a sham title, why, they kick up the row of a deuce! ”

“ My fellow-shooters, however, could not refrain from shouting with irrepressible admiration at the intrepidity with which, forestalling the fleetest dogs, I did rush forward to pick up the fallen grouse-birds, and repeatedly exhorted me to take greater care for my own safety.
I cannot say that they exhibited equivalent courageousness, seeing that, so often as I raised my gun to fire, they flung themselves upon their stomachs in the heather until I had finished, upon which I rallied them mercilessly upon their timidity, assuring them repeatedly that they had nothing to fear. ”

“ For what can melt the stony hearts of men, causing them to bellow like an ox and become tender as chickens, or what can rouse them to Indignation, Approval, Contempt, Wonderment, and every other known sentiment as required, so effectively as the trumpeting tongue of oratorical eloquence!
All I can aver is that, if I am not to be permitted to draw the glittering sword of my tongue from the scabbard of my mouth, I shall infallibly, in sheer sickishness at such short-sighted folly, throw up my brief! ”

“ Hon'ble Miss Chairwoman, Madams, Misses, and Hon'ble Mister Opener, the humble individual now palpitating on his limbs before you is a denizen from a land whose benighted, ignorant inhabitants are accustomed to treat the females of their species as small fry and fiddle faddle. Yes, Madams and Misses, in India the woman is forbidden to eat except in the severest solitude, and after her lord and master has surfeited his pangs of hunger ”

“ The only fly in the ointment of my success is the utter indifference of Jessimina to my aforesaid triumphs. At the termination of the hearing to-day, I beheld her so deeply engrossed in smiling and cordial converse with the smartly-attired curly-headed young solicitor who is acting on her behalf that she was totally unconscious of my vicinity! ”

“ Adventures follow one another rapidly; splendid brilliant pictures are frequent, and the thread of a tender, beautiful love story winds in and out of its pages."—New York Mail and Express.
"'The Reds of the Midi' is a red rose from Provence, a breath of pure air in the stifling atmosphere of present day romance—a stirring narrative of one of the most picturesque events of the Revolution It is told with all the strength of simplicity and directness: it is warm and pulsating, and fairly trembles with excitement."—Chicago Record. ”

“ Believe me, gentlemen of the jury, this is simply the barefaced attempt to bleed and mulct a poor impecunious Indian, For it is incredible that any English female, of genteel upbringings and the lovely and beauteous appearance which you have all beheld in this box, it is incredible, I say, that she should seriously desire to become a mere unconsidered unit in a bevy of Indian brides! ”

“ It is an indubitable fact that the discovery of steam is the most marvellous invention of the century. For had it been predicted beforehand that innumerable millions of human beings would be transported with security at a headlong speed for hundreds of miles along a ferruginous track, the most temporary deviation from which would produce the inevitable cataclysm and no end of a smash, the working majority would have expressed their candid opinion of such rhodomontade by cocking the contemptuous snook of incredulity. ”

“ Though of an unromantic obesity, it appears from the excessive eulogies he lavishes upon Jessimina that he is already the tangled fly in the web of her feminine enchantments. What a pity that such a prominent barrister should be so unskilled in seeing through such a millstone as the female heart! ”

“ Nevertheless, my heart was oppressed with many misgivings at having to hand over three hostage umbrellas—one being masculine and two feminine gender—and receiving nothing in exchange but a wooden medallion of no intrinsic worth, bearing the utterly disproportionate number of over one thousand! Next, after, at Miss Jessimina's bidding, having purchased a sixpenny index, we ascended the staircase, and on shelling out three shillings cash payment, were consecutively squeezed through a restricted wicket as if needles going through the eye of a camel. ”

“ If the jury think me a gay sort of Hindoo deceiver, who has heartlessly trifled with the affections of a simple, unsuspecting English girl, that will lead them to award substantial damages. If, on the other hand, they consider myself an inexperienced Oriental ninnyhammer of a fellow, who has been entrapped into an engagement by an ambitious, artful young woman—why, that may incline them to inflict a merely nominal penalty. ”

“ When the next train arrived, I, waiting prudently until it was quiescent, stepped into a compartment, wherein I was dismayed and terrified to find myself alone with an individual and two lively young terriers, which barked minaciously at my legs.
But I, with much presence of mind, protruded my head from the window, vociferating to those upon the platform, "Let out! Let out!! Fighting dogs are here!!!" ”

“ The action of the story throughout is splendid, and all aglow with color, movement, and vim. The style is as keen and bright as a sword-blade, and a Kipling has done nothing better in this line."—Chicago Evening Post.
"There is nothing in American fiction to compare with it. . . . Mr. Crane has added to American literature something that has never been done before, and that is, in its own peculiar way, inimitable."—Boston Beacon. ”

“ In Hereford Road I occupy garishly genteel first-floor front and back apartments at rupees fifteen per week and the Lady of the Land has entreated me to kindly excuse the waiting-maid for jumping with diffidence whenever I pop upon her unpremeditatedly on the stairs, being a nervous girl and unaccustomed to dark-complexioned gentlemen—though her own countenance, from superabundance of blacking and smuts, being of a far superior nigritude, it is I myself who should be more justified in jumping. ”

“ For the most superficial observer, and with the half of a naked optic, could easily discern the immeasurable superiority of Miss Wee-Wee to Jessiminia in all the refinements and delicacies of a real English lady, and although, up to present date, the timidity of girlishness has restrained Miss Allbutt-Innett from reciprocating my increasing spooniness, her parents and brother are of an overwhelming cordiality, and repeatedly mention their ardent hope that I may become their guest up in the hills some time this autumn. ”

“ From an ingrained love of teasing, and also the natural desire to stimulate her appreciation of my superior fertility in small talk and l'art de plaire, I do often slyly contrive to inflict his sole society upon her—to the huge entertainment of her father and mother, who carry on the joke by assisting my manœuvrings; but, although it affords me a flattering gratification to be plaintively upbraided by Miss Wee-Wee for my cruel desertion, I am resolved not to persist in such heartless pranks beyond her natural endurance. ”

“ For if the art were indeed so difficult as you pretend, how should it be acquired by so many timid and delicate feminines and mere nurselings? This machine of yours is nothing but an obsolete hors de combat with which it is not humanly possible to work the oracle! ”

“ So, although still of a twitter with amazement at Miss Jessimina's announcement, I considered it the better part of valour to corroborate it with promptitude, rather than incur the shocking punches and kicks of numerous athletic young commercials; and, upon hearing the piece of good news, Mrs Mankletow exploded into lachrymation, saying that she was divested of narrow-minded racial colour prejudices, and had from the first regarded me as a beloved son. ”

“ Need I explain I am alluding to the nowaday passion for propelling oneself at a severe speed by dint of unstable and most precarious machinery? It is now the exception which breaks the rule to take the air in the streets without being startled by the unseemly spectacles of go-ahead citizens straddled upon such revolutionary contrivances, threading their way with breakneck velocity under the very noses of omnibus and other horses, and ringing the shrill welkin of a tintinnabulating gong! ”

“ How is she possibly to endure a domestic existence exposed to the slings and arrows of a perpetual gorilla warfare from various native aunts and sisters-in-law, or how is she to reconcile her dainty and fastidious stomach, after the luscious and appetising fare of a Bayswater boarding-house, to simple, unostentatious, and frequently repulsive Indian eatables? ”

“ The reader has no privileges. He must, it seems, take his place in the ranks, and stand in the mud, wade in the river, fight, yell, swear, and sweat with the men. He has some sort of feeling, when it is all over, that he has been doing just these things. This sort of writing needs no praise. It will make its way to the hearts of men without praise."—New York Times.
"Told with a verve that brings a whiff of burning powder to one's nostrils. . . . In some way he blazons the scene before our eyes, and makes us feel the very impetus of bloody war."—Chicago Evening Post. ”

“ As Poet Burns remarks with great truthfulness, "Rank is but a penny stamp and a Man is a Man and all that." Nevertheless, for the present, I am resolved to remain mum as a mouse.
Since I am now in their pockets for a perpetuity, I was privileged on a recent evening to escort the Allbutt-Innett ladies to the Empire of India Exhibition, upon which I shall now pronounce the opinion of an expert, though space forbids me to describe its multitudinous marvels, save with the brevity of a soul of wit. ”

“ For, after beholding the plaintiff here and discovering that she had advanced rather than retrograded in physical attractiveness, I made cordial approaches to her, but she passed me by with a superciliously exalted nose! Gentlemen, it is a terrific piece of humbug for her to allege that her heart has been infernally lacerated by my unfaithfulness, when, at this very moment, instead of lending her ears to my brief and rambling oration, she is entirely engrossed in flirtatious converse with her curlypated juvenile solicitor! ”

“ Whereupon most did desist; but some, secreting their cigars in the hollow of their hands, took whiffs by stealth, and blushed to find it fame; while others, who were such grandees and big pots that their own convenience was the first and foremost desideratum, continued to smoke with lordliness and indifference. ”

“ Magnanimous and Ever Adorable Jessimina!
I am immensely tickled with flattered complacency at your indomitable desire to become the bride of such a man of straw as this undeserving self, and will no longer offer any factious opposition to your wishes. ”

“ Crane has made for himself a permanent place in literature. . . . Zola himself scarcely has surpassed its tremendous portrayal of throbbing, breathing, moving life."—New York Mail and Express.
"Mr. Crane's story should be read for the fidelity with which it portrays a life that is potent on this island, along with the best of us. It is a powerful portrayal, and, if somber and repellent, none the less true, none the less freighted with appeal to those who are able to assist in righting wrongs."—New York Times. ”