Various

“ In many a secret hole,
Each bearer doing as he's bid,
Intent upon the goal.
The goal being, I take it, the final death of Home Rule. And now comes the wonderful peroration, in which the whole great adventure is brought to its dignified and eloquent climax. It runs into twenty-three stanzas, of which I will give you the last two without comment—
Freedom is what we labour for,
Freedom, it is our right;
We have no wish for bloody war,
But, if we must, we'll fight. ”

“ So there's to be a parade on the sea front, and Ray Rymington, whose sense of the beautiful is absolutely, will see after it. There'll be none of those ghastly glass shelters, but just darling Sheraton benches at intervals, and the paraders will be carefully censored. Nobody who hasn't something of a profile will be allowed to walk up and down—and no woman who takes more than 4's in slices or who's wearing a last year's sleeve. So you see, dearest, it will be quite a cachet, both of person and style, to be seen walking on the parade at our watering-place. ”

“ Even in your remote fastnesses you must have heard of young Ivan Rowdidowsky, the very very latest thing in Russian composer-pianists. Playing the piano with his elbows, dressed in scarlet velvet, and fuller of "inner meanings" than anyone (even from Russia) ever was before, he captured London at the beginning of the Little Season, and his vogue has been colossal. ”

“ Turns out to be lively, intelligent creature. Wedgwood, always thoughtful of other people's tastes, brought down with him from the roof (in Thomas Roe's pocket) a few chips. One of these he placed in a saucer borrowed from the tea room. Here the grub, which for brevity we will call X., lives. In incredibly short time X. burrowed through the wood, its bright intelligent eyes gleaming out on the other side, as who should say, "Here I am again."
Expects in time to be able to make it converse. Busy teaching it difference between a coup and a plot. ”

“ Familiar but rarely printed language is used when occasion demands; primitive passions stalk naked and unashamed; and when murder is to be done it is done brutally, forthwith and notwithstanding the respective merits, from an heroic point of view, of active and passive agents. Being myself so situated in life that I am never likely to take part in any affair more passionate and drastic than a football match or a law-suit, I found the savage reality, the candour and the unbridled wrath of Where Bonds are Loosed (Duckworth) most welcome by contrast. ”

“ But The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a book to be read by any who want an insight into the conditions of working-class life at its average, with its virtues, its vices, its courage, its intolerable piteous anxieties. ”

“ But subsequently she goes slumming with Doris to such good purpose that the latter turns sick of the whole thing. Now, you will say, Callender's way is clear; he will reveal his identity and Doris will be prepared to tolerate his wealth. On the contrary, Mr. Sutko is not to be defeated by his own machinations; he means to bring Callender and Rose together; so he just takes and throws them into one another's arms and consigns Doris to an old admirer whom we have never so much as set eyes on. ”

“ It is a grim story of the unpicturesque and horribly anxious lives of working-folk, specifically of the house-painter and his mates working on a job, elated and satisfied at the beginning, depressed and despondent as the work nears completion with the uncertainty as to how long it will be before another job comes along. ”

“ I said, "not yet."
"Well, as soon as we arrived Papa took the catalogue and looked up all the Sargents—in the index part, you know, and wrote the numbers on his cuff and then we began to hunt them down.
"The first one was a 'still life.' Papa viewed it in some perplexity. 'Ah,' he said at length, 'just as I thought. I have been anticipating this for some time.' He adjusted his spectacles. 'The tendency of modern Art—that is to say the best Art—is towards a return to more classic forms. Sargent, as might be expected, leads the way; but he infuses the subject with his own special genius. ”

“ I put my hands over my face to prevent myself from bursting out, and the woman next to me shoved a silver bottle under my nose and gurgled into my ear, 'You've an artist-soul! I felt just as you do when I first heard this divine Rowdidowsky!' The silly geeser! Go it, old son! More power to your elbows! And don't forget, when you've made your pile, that your old pal, Joe, was part-author of the idea and helped you to work it out!"
Popsy, poor old dear, is having the Gurra-Gurra treatment for nervous collapse. Lord and Lady Ramsgate are enormously relieved at the turn things have taken ”

“ John Orley, the hero of the tale, starts out to follow worthily in the footsteps of his race, as a brainless but agreeable country magnate. Then comes an accident, which thwarts his physical ambitions and awakens his mental. Thereafter he essays the life of affairs—and fails all round; is defeated for Parliament, and equally worsted in the lists of Art. ”

“ Doris, for instance, was required to be too many things at once. A bluestocking and a sansculotte (not a very usual combination) , she was also a woman of the very latest cry in frocks. Miss Nina Sevening looked pretty and wore them well, but beyond this she gave us very little help. Rose, too (charmingly played by Miss Marie Löhr) , who disguised herself as a dweller in Bethnal Green by the simple expedient of a duster pinned over her shoulders—how could Mr. Sutro expect her dainty skirt and smart white shoes to escape the eye of this "clever" female, her rival? ”

“ A friend of mine once called her a social pirate, and there is no doubt that her method of collecting the people whom she wants is to besiege them until they eventually surrender. Why, however, Bobbie Outram is always asked to her smartest week-ends was a conundrum to me until I met her magnificently convalescing after influenza at Folkestone. For I know Bobbie, and I would run a mile or two any day to avoid him. ”

“ Popsy, Lady Ramsgate, has been folle de lui from the first, and at Easter she'd a big party for him down at "Popsy's Pleasaunce," her place in Sussex, and then and there announced that she was engaged to him, and that after her marriage she would drop the Ramsgate title and be known by "her Ivan's beautiful Slavonic name!" People were very nice to her about it and didn't laugh more than they could help, and all went cheerily, Rowdidowsky in his scarlet velvet playing to them with his elbows every evening ”

“ Whatever else is true of Canada there can be no doubt that it turns out delightful golfers. Smith proved to be just the best golfer I had ever met, being, in fact, when at the top of his form, almost exactly as good as I was. Hole after hole we halved in a mechanical eight. ”

“ Pretty play, watched with keen interest by critical audience. Austen's speech pleasantly differed from some familiar of late from same quarter. Luminous, lucid, temperate yet firm, it did much to uplift debate with tone of late lamentably lacking.
Horror and indignation of the Rev. Sir Chadband Byles at the grave prospect of a conciliatory attitude on the part of the Government towards the Ulster "rebels."
Winston, whilst once more replying in detail to insinuations and allegations upon which existence of the "Plot" is based, preferred to talk about the "Coup." ”

“ Robert Tressall was a house-painter, a Socialist, and very evidently a sincere if somewhat raw thinker. He left to his heirs and assigns a manuscript of many thousand words. It was a novel, oddly entitled The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Grant Richards) , and fell into the hands of Miss Jessie Pope, who recognised the genius in it (none too strong a word) , made some excisions, and now stands sponsor for it to the world. ”

“ Abel, the famous Manx novelist, has adopted similar measures to bring Mr. Andrew Carnegie to reason. The trouble is of long standing and has grown out of the movement inaugurated by Mr. Abel to induce municipalities and local authorities to refuse the gifts of Free Libraries. Such benefactions, as Mr. Abel has most conclusively shown, while nominally intended to educate the masses, in reality have the result of restricting the sale and circulation of those works of fiction which conduce most effectively to the culture, the intellectual emancipation and the moral uplift of the nation. ”

“ Having no sort of intention of keeping up the imposture, even if he could, and being fearful lest the exposure of his wealth and education would, in her present state, alienate her affections, he proposes by practical demonstration to disgust her with the mode of life which she designs to lead. ”

“ Papa as an Art critic is temporarily under a cloud. I'll tell you. It came about in this way: Papa is a great admirer of Sargent, and to-day he was in a particularly Sargentesque mood. 'The great drawback to the Academy,' he said, as we were setting forth, 'is that the Sargents are spoiled by the other pictures. The huge mass of these all over the place entirely destroys one's perceptions of colour value. ”

“ Sir,—Some days ago I sent you a letter in which I mentioned that on April 15th a cuckoo was seen eating ripe strawberries in the garden next but one to mine, and asking whether you could tell me if anything of the kind had been known before. But up to the present I have received no reply. The only result of my letter has been the receipt of a number of circulars announcing works on the subjects of nature study and fruit culture. ”

“ Stella Clackmannan, who has such an active brain that everyone's quite anxious about her, is going to have tons of really pretty shells laid along a part of the beach (above high water) , and people will go shell-gathering en habit coquilleux.
The only feature Week-End-on-Sea will have in common with other seaside places is a parade. At first Stella wouldn't hear of having one; but Norty told her there's "a deep-seated primal instinct in human nature for sitting on benches and watching one's fellow-creatures walk up and down, and it would not be wise to thwart this instinct." ”

“ As a fact I'm quite good at getting only the right people. Fliers have rather had their day, though they are still useful, and I like an explorer or two for week-ends, though the best kind seems to be always exploring. But Brenda was getting ahead of me—I don't mind confessing that to you—until I thought of Bobbie Outram. ”

“ Of course, our coasts quite bristle with seaside towns, but they're places people can't go to because everybody goes there. And so the Clackmannans are going to supply a long-felt want, as old-fashioned people say, and give us a ville de bains of our very very own. Its name is to be changed from Shrimpington to Week-End-on-Sea. It has no railway station, which, of course, is a great merit; it's not to have any big blatant hotels or pensions—nothing but charming bungalow-cottages ”

“ Sutro's confidence and able to penetrate the obscurity of his motives. At first even I could understand something of the scheme, which ran (as I thought) like this:—Wilfrid Callender, a rich bachelor of Harrow and Oxford, has a socialist friend, David Effick, at whose meetings he happens to have encountered a Girton girl, Doris Marrable (pretty daughter of a hop-merchant in affluent circumstances) , who affects revolutionary ideals. In order to win the approval of this lady he represents himself as an anarchist plumber, earning five pounds a week ”

“ The cashier at our Goldstead branch has the misfortune to drop his scoop accidentally when cashing a cheque for his worthy mayor of our select suburb.
A SPORTING CHANCE.
It is generally in the spring that I begin to notice how big my accounts are growing. I don't know why this should be, unless it is because I haven't paid any during the previous year. At any rate you must take my word for it. I have the accounts here.
Then, again, it is a most remarkable fact that whenever one has bills to pay one finds there are other things to be bought. ”

“ We trust that this is the beginning of the end of the toy-dog craze. We have always considered elephants more interesting, and ladies no doubt will not be slow to realise that there is more effect to be got out of them. ”

“ The fate of the Mother Country depended upon the result of this hole.
I drove a long one, the longest of the day, slightly hooked.
"Good shot," said Smith with an effort. He pressed and foozled badly. I tried not to look pleased.
We found his ball in a thick clump of heather. With a grim look on his face, he took out his niblick....
I stayed by him and helped him count up to eight.
"Where's your ball?" he growled.
"A long way on," I said reproachfully. "I wish you'd hurry up. The poor thing will be getting cold." ”

“ I will come round to tea."
I rang off. I made a little parcel of my accounts and then telephoned for a taxi. In due course I found Edith in the drawing-room.
"Hello," she said. "Is it very bad trouble?"
"We are," I replied, "in deep water. Life is very shallow." Edith laughed; she appreciates wit. ”

“ In the garden at dusk she finds a young English traveller (who has just told us what a penchant he has for "women, women, women"—he is very insistent about this) , and being caught in conversation with him is placed by her lord in a sack and consigned to the deep ”

“ So they did, right on to the end, reached by earnest appeal for peaceful settlement of a question which between the varied circumstance of "Plot" and "Coup" has already brought Ulster within touch of civil war. ”