Various

“ Will not a confusion arise in another generation when nobody quite knows who and how many his or her half-brothers and half-sisters are?"
"Pseudonymia!" said Perugino, and his voice broke in two places, "I am pained. I had thought that you, so pure, so emancipate, would have had a soul above blithering detail. Besides, do you not see that in this way the whole world will eventually become one family? We may not live to see this Millennium, but future Fabians may. What we want is a protomartyr in the cause. ”

“ I am, alas! happily married. But you, you are single; why should you not set to all your sister-slaves a high example of that martyrdom of which the glory, as well as the inconvenience, has been denied to me?"
"Ah, dear Perugino!" she cried, visibly affected for the third time to her finger-tips, "must it ever be so? Profession, as you say, divorced from practice? ”

“ It will do almost everything, but it won't shut. I give up the dining-room, and enter my study. Again, I try to close the door. But no; it has caught the infection of its neighbour and also declines to close. I try the doors of the drawing-room, bedroom, and the dressing-room. But no, my efforts are in vain. None of them will close. The wind howls, and the draughts rush in with redoubled fury. They triumph meanly in my despair.
There is only one thing to do, and I determine to do it. I must send for Mr. Lopside to take away as soon as possible his antiplutocratic tubing. ”

“ These men can never mate like the birds, never be guide-posts to point humanity along the path of Terewth."
"But," interrupted Pseudonymia, rose-red to her quivering finger-tips with shame at the bare mention of marriage; "but I thought you disapproved of the debasing principle of wedlock."
"Do not interrupt," said Perugino, kindly; "I will come to that two or three pages later on. To be prudent, I was going to say, is to be vicious and cruel. Of course it is not given to all to be born married. But this natal defect one can easily remedy. I knew a young fellow who did. ”

“ One must consider one's prospects. This, you will say, seems to clash with what I said before about calculating egoists. But profession and practice are ever divorced under our depraved system of civilisation. At last, having established myself, I rose superior to sordid avarice, and wrote for once solely to satisfy my own taste and conscience."
"A noble sacrifice!" said Pseudonymia, suppressing her dimples for the moment. ”

“ But what is a real pleasure, and what will attract all lovers of good acting, is, first of all, Mr. Forbes Robertson's admirable impersonation of the difficult, unsympathetic rôle of a despicably selfish, self-conceited, cowardly prig; and, secondly, to a certain extent, the rendering of the heroine by Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who, however, does not come within measurable distance of her former self as Mrs. Tanqueray—her "great stove scene" being about the weakest point in her performance. ”

“ In the distance they noticed thankfully the saucer-shaped combes of paludina limestone rising in pleasant strata to the rearing scarp of the Weald. Perugino Allan was the gentleman's name. He had only met Pseudonymia Bampton the day before, but already from mere community of literary instincts they were life-long friends. She had reached the trysting-place first. All true modest women do this.
"Pseudonymia!" said Perugino, blushing easily to his finger-tips.
"Perugino!" said Pseudonymia, blushing to hers. ”

“ Perugino sank back into the spongy turf, leaning his cheek against an upright spike of summer furze of the genus Ulex Europæus. "Some men," he began, "ignoble souls, 'look about' them before they marry. Such are calculating egoists. Pure souls, of finer paste, are, so to speak, born married. Others hesitate and delay. ”

“ Committee is the Providence that shapes the ends of Bills, rough hew them how we may in the draughtsman's hands or on the second reading. For all practical purposes second-reading debate might be concluded at to-night's sitting. It extended over seven clear hours. Given twenty minutes per speech, the maximum length for useful purposes, twenty-one members, more than the House cares to hear, might have spoken. The time saved, if necessary, added on to opportunity in Committee.
That, however, not the way we do business here. Disestablishment Bill a measure of first importance ”

“ The difficulties of teething, a paltry desire to be weaned before the wedding, reluctance to being married in long clothes, the terrors of croup during the honeymoon—these and other excuses, thinly veiling hidden depths of depravity, are employed to defer the divine moment. I have known men to reach the preposterously ripe age of one-and-twenty unwedded, protesting that they dare not risk their prospects at the Bar. ”

“ The visitor thanked his noble friend, and withdrew. Then the Baron finished the novel. "Good!" quoth the Baron, closing the book with regret at parting with a long-forgotten but now recovered friend; "but 'tis odd how one lives and learns. I do not remember having ever heard that Bottom the weaver had been christened 'William' by Shakspeare. Nor can I find that bully Bottom was so addressed by his friends. And if I have missed it, how came William to be the prénom of the Athenian weaver in the time of Theseus and Hippolyta! ”

“ Vision instantly conjured up before eyes of Committee of Squire of Malwood prowling about town with his pockets loaded with £4,132,500. voted to defray the charge for wages in the Navy, flinging the cash about like Jack ashore, making the most of his time before Local Veto became the law of the land.
It was later that the MacGregor came in unconscious competition with Alderman Cotton. Leaving the Navy for a moment he surveyed the Continent of Europe peopled with armed men. "Why!" he cried with comprehensive sweep of his arm, "these great armies are like fighting cocks. ”

“ Ebbsmith fascinates the Dook. Mr. Hare's performance of the Duke of St. Olpherts is a real gem, ranking among the very best things he has ever done, and I may even add "going one better." It is on his acting, and on the acting of the scenes in which he appears, that the ultimate popularity of the piece must depend. The theatrical stove-cum-book situation may tell with some audiences better than with others, but it is not an absolute certainty ”

“ We'll 'go out' if we think our wages should be raised. Sure to be some blacklegs who will skulk in by central lobby and offer to do a day's talking on the old terms. But we'll have pickets and all that sort of thing. Sometimes we'll march in a body to Hyde Park, and Baron Ferdy will address us from a waggon on the rights of man and the iniquity of underpaying M.P.'s. I see a high old time coming. Shall put in early claim for a secretaryship. Always a good billet."
Business done.—Welsh Disestablishment Bill threw a gloom over morning sitting. ”

“ For at the reading, or during rehearsal, there must have been very considerable hesitation felt by everybody, author included, as to the fate of this risky situation—this "momentum unde pendet"—and for which nothing, either in the character or in the previous history of the heroine, has prepared us. Her earliest years have been passed in squalor; she has made a miserable marriage; then she has become a Socialist ranter, and hopes to achieve a triumph as a Socialist demagogue. ”

“ Allan o'Gateshead on again with more "Rough Castings." Last time House in Committee on Navy Estimates he spread feeling of genuine alarm by denouncing the British boiler. "Who," he thundered, "is responsible for the engines of the Royal Navy? Where is the Hornet you trumpeted so loudly a year ago? Where," he continued, bending beetling brows on Civil Lord of the Admiralty, "are her boilers?" ”

“ Gamp observes,—but with whom she is living, and with whom, like Grant Allen's The Woman who did (a lady whom in many respects Mr. Pinero's heroine closely resembles) , and who came to grief in doing it, she intends to continue living. This man, her paramour, she trusts will be her partner in the socialistic regeneration of the human race. At the close of the third act Mrs. Ebbsmith, being such as the author of her being has made her, is presented with a bible, and, in a fit of ungovernable fury, she pitches it into the stove "with all her might and main" ”

“ Showed in quite business-like fashion that Allan's poetic fancy had run away with him. Convinced grateful Committee that British boiler, on which safety of State may be said to rest, is all right. A model speech, brief, pointed. A man with something to say, who straightway sits down when he's said it. As the poet (not Allan o' Gateshead) says,
He came as a boon and a blessing to men,
The modest, the lucid, clear-pointed J. Penn.
MacGregor (as "The Dougal Creature") . "I'll pass from that point." Business done.—Committee voted trifle over four millions as wages for Jack. ”

“ Some of the Arthurs will write for her, one Arthur will compose for her, two Arthurs will act and sing with her, and Arthur, the managing director, will direct and manage her. May every success attend the venture! But how about authors and composers offering their work to so professional a board of directors? Doesn't Sir Fretful Plagiary's objection to sending his play in to the manager of Drury Lane, namely, that "he writes himself." hold good nowadays? ”

“ However, this by the way, and only à propos of a remark as to William Bottom, the weaver, made by Marryat. I anticipate with pleasure re-making the acquaintance of Jacob Faithful and Midshipman Easy."
The Banishment of Jessop Blythe, written by Joseph Hatton, and published by Hutchinson, belongs to the Yellow Book series, only that is as far as the cover is concerned, which is of a startlingly jaundiced tone and does not in the least represent the kindly author's views of life. The story is about the ropemakers by one who clearly "knows the ropes." ”

“ A Balfourian Query.—"No possibility of any return to the shareholders," was, in the Pall Mall Gazette, the heading of a report of a meeting of the members of the "Liberator Company." What! no possibility of any return? Yes, surely, the return of Jabez. But even then—cui bono? or Cui Buenos Ayres? Who of the unfortunate losers would not far rather get back something than get back somebody, and that somebody Jabez.
The Early Bird.—Mr. Gosling, British Minister, has demanded an indemnity from the Nicaraguans of £15,000 for the expulsion of Mr. Hatch, British Vice-Consul at Bluefields. ”

“ He rises from the ground, reassumes his overcoat, and once more possesses himself of his bag of useful instruments.
"Well, what shall I do?" I ask.
"Well, you see Sir, it's not for the likes of me to advise gentry folk like you. ”