Various

“ As for myself, no one can say that I lack the sporting spirit, and if I am late in the field it is because there is not enough noise and bustle about our Hunt. It needs, I submit, the romantic colour and pageantry that fire an Englishman's blood and rouse him irrevocably from his marmalade.
In this connection, as we say so charmingly at our office, I have laid certain preliminary proposals before Enderby and Jackson. A lot of the sportsmen who hunt the 8.52 in our village do so in motor-cars, which is hardly playing the game. ”

“ Ernest laughed sardonically. "Now let me tell you of my plan," he said, taking a newspaper cutting from his pocket. "Here is my solution to the holiday problem, and it certainly doesn't cost five guineas a week. Why not adopt it?"
"Why, it's an umbrella," commented Mother, feeling for her glasses. "But surely you don't expect it to rain all the time?"
"That is not an umbrella, it is an illustration of a portable tent," explained Ernest. "The canvas folds up and can be carried in the pocket, while the pole also folds and is convertible into a walking-stick by day. ”

“ I stepped forward to exchange it for one of my stubbly ones when—
"Oh, Jack," said Marjorie, "you've trodden on her!"
"'Her,'" I said. "Who's 'her'?"
"The dearest little tortoiseshell stray cat," replied Marjorie. "You really might have been more careful."
"I say, that's rather unfair," I said. "I stagger home tired to the teeth after a particularly thin day in the City, followed by a sardine-tin journey, and my own wife turns on me in favour of the first outcast cat that comes along. It's enough to drive a man to dope." ”

“ The door-keeper didn't believe there could be anybody who really cared all that much for communism; for his part he kept the door because there was money to be made easily that way. At the next committee meeting he made more money and made it more easily, and my friend was safely locked up in the cupboard before the committee arrived. What with the heat inside, the thought that the door-keeper might be more cunning than had appeared and a persistent desire to sneeze, he questioned all the time whether he was the right man in the right place. ”

“ Naturally, as of course a nursery-governess is much more likely than an heiress to look like that, Anthony's people mistake her for a poor country cousin who is also expected, and Cynthia, discovering that her host and hostess and their dreary daughters intend the heiress to marry Anthony and, worse than that, that he has called her "the goose with the golden eggs," fosters the mistake and does her best to pay them all out. ”

“ My friend then proceeded to the frontier, where, by arrangement, he was arrested. In the inside pocket of his inside coat a bundle of messages were found. The police nodded at him.
"Yes," they said, "here are the messages all right. We don't know that they help much, but we suppose that we mustn't blame you."
"Come, come, come," said my friend, "if you doubt me, search me." They did so, and, written on linen and sewn into the lining of his coat, they found some more messages, which really did help them. Yours ever, Henry. ”

“ I said stoutly. "On the contrary, you're coming in stronger than ever. Why, one might almost look upon you as one of the newest fashionable crazes, like motor-scooters and cinema stars and indiscreet memoirs." ”

“ Finished a rattling good article on a way to make our army look more impressive to the foe, namely by fitting each man with a dummy man on either side of him. Bosch aeroplane observers would imagine then that we were three times as strong as we are, and some very desirable results might follow.
Sent for Northcliffe and told him that unless my articles are treated with more respect I cannot go on and the War will be lost. ”

“ He secured a front seat at the next public meeting of the section, applauded vigorously when the President referred to the need of more briskness in France and England and asked for a private interview after the meeting was over. In a few well-chosen words he offered his services to run messages over the frontier. Off his platform the President was quite a practical man and, though he didn't use these words, he indicated to my friend as follows: "If you are a genuine blackguard the police won't let you go; if you are not a genuine blackguard you are not really one of us." ”

“ I am extraordinary lucky in having all these nice people to fall back on when I am worn out with War-winning and Tribunal duties.
Wrote a wonderful article on the importance of dressing up some one to look like Hindenburg and dropping him at night by parachute from an aeroplane into the German lines near Head-Quarters. It would have to be a biggish man who can speak German well—Mr. Chesterton perhaps, but I have never met Mr. Chesterton, as he seems never to lunch or dine at the Ritz ”

“ There must be other sportsmen situated as I am, and I should like to see all the little lanes streaming with pink coats; and it would be very nice too if they all brought their dogs to see them off, as some do already.
I am quite prepared to admit that neither Enderby nor Jackson sees eye to eye with me in this matter. They argue that ample notice is given of the imminent arrival of the 8.52 by the express train which passes through the cutting at 8.43, and is popularly known as "the warner." ”

“ Can a healthy metabolism be superinduced on an economic system already showing symptoms of extrinsic conglucination?
Professor Prawling is of opinion that it can, but only if and when the evils of co-partnership and co-operation have been neutralized by a diastolic synthesis. To compute exactly the extent to which these evils have been developed he has devised a syncretic abacus, in which, on the principle of the spectroscope, the aplanatic foci are arranged in fluorescent nodules each equidistant from the metacentre. ”

“ My articles are read everywhere, and some have been set to music.
More men must be obtained, and therefore wrote a capital article calling on all criminals to cease their labours during the War, in order to release the police for the army. After this effort, which was very tiring, lunched at the Ritz with Ethel Levey, Lavery and Soveral. ”

“ Dined at the Ritz. A large party, including Lady Cunard and Lady Diana Manners. The Princess of X. was present and I found her intelligent. Afterwards to Lady Y.'s for bridge. The cards were mad, but we had some wonderful rubbers, the four best players in London being concerned.
Wrote one of my best articles, on the importance of eating and drinking and being merry during great national crises. Urged among other things the addition of restaurant cars to all trains, even those on the Tubes. It is madness to encourage seriousness, as The Times is doing. ”

“ The new theory, like the old, deserves to be treated "in no spirit of sedentary sentimentalism, but in its largest and most oleaginous entirety. It is no plan for fixing hat-pegs in a passage, nor is it a mode of treating neuralgia with treacle." ”

“ He rather took to the description of you, dropped all signs of doubt or anxiety and wondered if we couldn't get hold of you to come and take coffee with us one evening? You may rest assured, Charles, that there is now one café in Central Europe where you are regarded as a first-class fellow, even though your acquaintance has yet to be made; bon camarade; not above picking a pocket or two yourself in a moment of enthusiasm. You must come here and show yourself one day. You need have no fear. We never pick each others' pockets ”

“ Ex-sailors on the reserve need not be alarmed by the repeated rumours that a surprise mobilisation of the Fleet may be ordered very shortly, as we now have it on good authority that, in order to ensure its complete success, plenty of notice will be given to them beforehand.
Women are said to be fonder than men are of morbid stage plays. Weddings also have a greater fascination for them. ”

“ Those who arrive early at the meet in the morning (but, as I have hinted, I am not one of these) stroll about the platform, I am told, talking of the rare old times when the 8.52 used to be the 8.51, pulling out their watches every now and then and saying to the station-master, "She's twenty-five seconds late," for all season ticket-holders have special permission from the railway company to put trains into the feminine gender. ”

“ LOVE'S HANDICAP.
[A daily paper points out that many girls find their sweethearts in print, and expresses the hope that when "a real man comes along he may be as brave and tender, as cheery and clean-living," as these heroes of fiction.] ”

“ It seems to me that our local Hunt wants waking up. In some places, I believe, there are still people who "cheerily rouse the slumbering morn" by hunting the fox or the fox-cub, and, if one cannot let slumbering morns lie, there is no jollier way of rousing them. But in our village we hunt the 8.52. ”

“ The motor-car of polished steel and no paint-work is the latest innovation. It is said that this will do away with the objection of pedestrians that under present conditions one cannot be knocked down without soiling one's clothing. ”

“ I watch the faces of the 'men,' boys in so many cases, jumping from their trains; from the north, the south, the east, the west they come, and they come not alone but dona ferentes—they carry tennis-racquets, golf-sticks, cycles, sidecars, kitbags, gladstone-bags, trunks, hold-alls. ”

“ One of these was recently published, and John Antony is now dead. The novel did it.
Yet it was a very mild sort of "shocker," about a very ordinary murder. The villain simply slew one of his typists in the counting-house with a sword-umbrella and concealed his guilt by putting her in a pillar-box. But it had "power," and it was very favourably reviewed. One critic said that "the author, who was obviously a woman, had treated with singular delicacy and feeling the ever-urgent problem of female employment in our great industrial centres." ”

“ Enderby and Jackson believe that the next train is the 10.15; but that is their narrow-minded parochialism. They are quite wrong. About ten minutes after the 8.52 has gone away another perfectly good train steals panting from the undergrowth. ”

“ Mutatis mutandis we may add the further statement that it is "the truest and tenderest thesis that can occupy the most calculating cosmopolite." The corporate pursuit of a granulated conglucination is perhaps the highest achievement of which the present generation is capable. ”

“ The thrilling incident of the stray cat at "Chez Nous" is never likely to get into the newspapers. On the other hand, lots of incidents which do get in never deserve to. It's all a question of head-lining, which is the bluff by which the public is induced to read matter it would otherwise skip.
The affair began while I was in the City. I learnt afterwards that Marjorie (my wife) was crooning to her needles the unmetrical jumper lullaby, "Six purl, eight plain ”

“ M—— can hardly be unaware of the fact that it is only owing to the co-operation of ourselves and our subjects that they are able to carry on their business with success. We are unwilling to resort to extreme measures, but unless the paragraph is immediately withdrawn we shall be obliged to take steps accordingly, in which case Messrs. ”