Various

“ The celebrity awaited his interviewer with some impatience. He had arranged his story with considerable care. He was prepared to show that he was the best of boys at school, the most studious of students at the university, the worthiest of men at all times. He felt sure that when the record of his life was published, preparations would be made to erect a statue and a glass window in his honour. And so he was satisfied.
In due course the interviewer appeared. The man was bland and persuasive. He requested the celebrity to take a chair, and then placed his hand upon his brow. ”

“ It is a great thing to know—and one must believe it if one believes, as I do, in what the newspapers say—that every single male member of the upper or fashionable ranks of society is at this moment engaged in slaughtering grouse. ”

“ It is of course well known that every member of Parliament is, on his election, presented by a grateful country with a large and well-stocked grouse-moor, situated in one of the most picturesque and romantic parts of Scotland, and no one (not even a brewer) is ever raised to the peerage unless he can prove that at least three generations of his family have shot grouse regularly on the 12th of August on a moor of their own. ”

“ We should not be a Society organised to bring happiness into the humblest home if we could not manage that also. Look here: start Day 1 at 6.30 P.M.; be in Amsterdam morning of Day 2. Pause of thirty-six hours for refreshment; then back again to London in time for breakfast on Day 4. And with a view to bringing happiness into the humblest home we charge a guinea for travelling expenses, which includes a state cabin in the saloon of an excellent boat. ”

“ Tanner sat and brooded by the hour over fresh wrongs of Ireland, complicated by these proceedings in China. It was Harrington who accidentally and unintentionally dropped the spark which, as a Member once observed, let slip the dogs of war. "That's a lie!" remarked Tanner, by way of criticising one of Harrington's statements. Remark made in quite ordinary way; just as if he had been moved to say "How d' you do?" or, "It's a fine day." Friends and countrymen sitting near not in slightest degree disturbed. Only Tanner's way. ”

“ There are 725 tinker children, who get practically no education. Bonnie Scotland, land of grandeur, where the thousand tinkers wander, you must catch these children, and educate them! The adult tinker may be irreclaimable, but at least the children should have a chance of something better—a choice of being soldier, sailor, tinker, or tailor, as they prefer. ”

“ Irish co-operators have already made giant strides in the production of milk and butter, and now the Irish Co-operative Agency has decided, so says the Cork Daily Herald, to "take up the egg-trade." We hope the egg-traders won't be "taken up," too; if so, the trade would be arrested just when it was starting, and where would the profit be then? "It is stated that many Irish eggs now reach the English market dirty, stale, and unsorted," so that wholesale English egg-merchants have preferred to buy Austrian and French ones. Ireland not able to compete with the foreigner! ”

“ Human instinct irrepressible even in Members of Parliament. Must be in the first flight, whatever is going on. So swarmed round table, made dashes for stray copies of the New Testament, snatched at slices of cardboard containing form of oath, as the anonymous drowning man clutched at the fortuitous straw. ”

“ Evidently tender cannot go ashore without Tubbs; equally evident that Tubbs is not to sail with the Orotava. Puzzle, to find Tubbs. Stewards, chief officers, mates, men rush in all directions to rout out Tubbs. Look-out man aloft in sort of suspended clothes basket cannot get a sight of Tubbs either in the offing or out of it. Nothing like Tubbs to be seen anywhere. ”

“ But things in immediate neighbourhood of Tanner been seething for some time. His topographical position a little trying. Faced by triumphant majority of anti-Home-Rulers, distinctly seeing on Treasury Bench two Balfours where formerly only one had sat, he was irritated by having on his flank the Redmond frères, Harrington, Clancy and other compatriots almost worse than Saxons, not to mention the pain to a man of peace of consciousness that between his friends and colleagues Tim Healy and John Dillon there was something lacking in the way of perfect loving-kindness. ”

“ Imagination conjures up the picture of happy bands of shooters all duly booted, gaitered, gunned, cartridged and cigarred, sallying forth with dogs and keepers at 5 A.M., no doubt after eating, as condemned men do, a hearty breakfast. ”

“ What usually happens on like occasions is for one Leader of Party to take his seat amid loud cheers from his friends, taken up with strident voice from other side when their man comes in. Now cheers, if indulged in, would mingle, and might be misunderstood. A welcome meant for Prince Arthur might seem to be bestowed upon Squire, and vice versâ, as Mr. Anstey once said. Whilst perturbed House looked on, Hemprer Joe, having watched his men, fairly started, reach their goal, followed with swinging step and the inevitable orchid. ”

“ I am never irritable myself; I am sometimes justifiably annoyed by the unreasonable conduct of a friend. But I have often noticed the most melancholy irritability in others, and have wondered why they gave way to it, and what it portended. ”

“ My own experience, however, is that sportsmen are not specially early even on the 12th, although keepers and other professional guns who cater for the London market are often so early as to anticipate by more than a few hours the recurring anniversary. ”

“ Since music has become one of the recognised branches of study, we do not obtain many candidates for the task of stair-sweeping. And it is not surprising. A girl who can play the piano, or lead a chorus, is surely worthy of a better fate than that which usually falls to the lot of a servant in a middle-class establishment. ”

“ All I can say is that I have rarely allowed a year to pass without seeing at least one clown steal a string of sausages, a lady's bonnet, two plump babies, half a dozen fowls, the greater part of a general dealer's property, and the upper half of a policeman. ”

“ Whenever the 12th of August, or, for the matter of that, the 1st of September or the 1st of October, comes round with the revolving year, we are informed in every newspaper that "Sportsmen were early astir." ”

“ Would that I could tell of the other attractions of Amsterdam, of the Royal Palace, the Zoo, the theatres, and the canals. But exigencies of time and space say "No." Those who want to see and hear have only one thing to do. Let them hie to the Hook of Holland, ho, to the Dutch capital, and further description will be unnecessary. ”

“ Audience almost entirely Dutch, entertainment almost entirely English. Several British singers. One, a gentleman in evening dress covered by a long Newmarket overcoat, with a répertoire redolent of Holborn and the Surrey side, sang about "Nine in a row" who (so I understood him to assert) "rolled down the street" when (if I am not mistaken) they were rather "rocky about their feet." Then he had another ditty which referred to his want of value. Was he worth anything? He appealed to the Dutch audience. Some of them (possibly friends of the singer) replied in the negative. ”

“ Wanted here a spacious, light and airy place where passengers carrying "hand properties" can move about rapidly without loss of that equanimity of temper which every traveller should cultivate under circumstances that would try even the joviality of that utterly impossible creation Mark Tapley. Still Mark Tapley is an ideal to be lived up to as near as may be ”

“ Those who study the reports of meetings of Town Councils learn many things. For instance, at Bristol the other day, during a discussion of passenger tolls at the docks, Mr. Gore complained that they had been hocussed by the chairman of the sub-committee that day. Mr. Baker objected to the word "hocussed" being applied to him, but added that they had been hocussed out of a good deal of time to-day, and Mr. Gore retorted that they were going to be hocussed out of another quarter-of-an-hour yet. Mr. Baker asked Mr. Gore to withdraw the word, and Mr. Gore refused. ”

“ Oh them hundereds and thowsends of lovely Trees! every one of which seems far more butiful than the last, and quite equal to any we had yet seen. At one place we was showed the place where Good Quean Alizebeth always went up stairs on Orseback, coz she did not like going up stairs in public. At another we was showed where the present Queen sat in her privet Carridge, and made the hole nayberhood bow to her by the hunderd. ”

“ Me and a werry old Frend of mine has seized the hoppertoonity that ardly ever okkers to too frends as has little or nothink to do for a hole week, to thurrowly enjoy theirselves for that time, and see weather sutten places in our little world is reelly as butiful and as injoyable as sum peeple tries to make out as they is. ”