Various

“ This amazing result they have achieved by foisting on the office typewriter—trés gamine—the poetical output of one of their own number, and exploiting her as a prodigy under the auspices of a patron of the arts—one Lord Glandeville. How this Mæcenas, this connoisseur in taste, was ever imposed upon by the masquerading of such incredible types, and how they could have amassed all that wealth by the publication of serious poetry, the most notorious of drugs on the market—these are among the "things" that we should all "like to know" in case our own professions should fail us. ”

“ Indeed, our sympathies were provoked for a man whose finest instincts had been trifled with; who had been suffered to fall in love with the poet-soul of a girl only to find that she was the tool of a gang of rogues. One of them, Dick Gilder, might tell him that he (Glandeville) was an egoist and that he ought to have fallen in love with the girl's body, as he (Gilder) had done, instead of her supposed soul; but that did not help matters much, or prevent our feeling that this treatment of Glandeville was no matter for laughter. ”

“ Chevalier Simpson, pale but controlled, would then place his money on seventeen—"dix-sept," he would say to the croupier to make it quite clear—and the ball would be spun. As it slowed down the tension in the crowd would increase. "Mon Dieu!" a woman would cry in a shrill voice; there, would be guttural exclamations from Germans; at the edge of the crowd strong men would swoon. ”

“ Probably his American publishers have issued a first edition of a hundred thousand of this story. The result may be imagined. Wild-eyed literary agents will carry the fiery cross throughout the country, crying that the historical novel is not dead after all, that there is still money in it; and thousands of estimable young men who might have been turning out quite decent stories of American life will thrust paper into their typewriters and begin, "Of the days when I followed my dear lord through many a hard-fought fray it ill becomes me, plain rude man that I am, to speak...." ”

“ Hawtrey's I want matter for laughter and nothing else.
The best individual performances were those of Mr. Lyston Lyle—really excellent as a soldier of fortune—and Miss Helen Haye as Lord Glandeville's aunt who lays herself out to defeat the matrimonial designs of the prodigy. Mr. Charles Hawtrey was not perhaps at his very best as Dick Gilder. He wore an air of detachment and indulged his old habit of looking over the heads of his stage-audience. He had too many set speeches and was not always quite sure what word came next. Still his mere presence is always irresistible. ”

“ Dahlia had obviously been reading novels about people who break the bank.
"It's as good a way of losing as any other," said Archie. "Let's do it for our first gamble, anyway. Simpson, as our host, shall put the money on. I, as his oldest friend, shall watch him to see that he does it. What's the number to be?"
We all thought hard for several moments.
"Samuel, what's your age?" asked Myra at last.
"Right off the board," said Thomas.
"You're not really more than thirty-six?" Myra whispered to him. "Tell me as a secret." ”

“ We say it in no petty strain of party triumph, but the day of reckoning can obviously no longer be delayed. A gang of wholly reckless and unscrupulous political adventurers have sown the dragon's teeth in the wind; let the whole nation see to it that they are now forced to reap armed men in the whirlwind! ”

“ I said, "why you are so keen on my staying in London. There's something behind this—something more than meets the eye."
"Nonsense," she said, "it's only your comfort; but men never can be reasonable."
"Dad," said Helen to Rosie, "is going to have a holiday given him." ”

“ Miss Margaret Macaulay tells her story in a pleasant enough way, and describes with some skill its idyllic setting (for Mr. Powell was first a country squire, and only secondly a manufacturer) ; but since she neither indulges in satire, social and economic speculation, nor any pretence of subtlety in psychological probings, there is a curiously old-fashioned air about her novel. ”

“ Vaughan Kester, author of John o' Jamestown (Hodder and Stoughton) , is innocent of intent to do the dreadful thing that he has done. With the book itself I have no fault to find; it is quite a good historical novel, and tells with a fair amount of excitement the story of Captain John Smith and the early settlers in Virginia, not omitting Pocahontas. Mr. Kester's crime consists not in his novel, but in the fact that he has probably plunged America into all the horrors of a new outbreak of historical fiction. A few years ago every adult in the United States was writing historical novels. ”

“ Disguise the fact with what specious rhetoric they may, the truth remains that our opponents have deliberately endeavoured to tamper with a great national possession, and to make the British Army a tool in the game of party. ”

“ There is some mild word-painting that may remind you pleasantly of pleasant places; and a disproportionate pother because in one of the sudden lake storms Leslie dashes for shelter into what he supposes to be his own bedroom (actually the heroine's) and is imprisoned there by the sticking of a shutter. An awkward incident, of course, especially as it occurred in the dead of night, but scarcely enough to make half a novel out of. Naturally, in the end Leslie owns up about the heroism, and goes away to justify his unearned credit upon the stricken field ”

“ Curzon's generous alarm deepened. Better know the worst if it were lurking in the background.
"How comes it," he asked, "if the Government felt compelled to withdraw these paragraphs, and if the Secretary for War resigned, that we still have the good fortune to see the noble Viscount in charge of the Government bench?"
"The latter point," said Morley, "will be answered more or less satisfactorily to-morrow."
Curzon went home in state of profound depression. Morley, regardless of the comfort, even the safety, of his colleagues in the Cabinet, evidently meant resignation. ”

“ Connor Shaw, the premier stated that he had decided to retire from the House of Commons and lead the Party from the House of Lords. The entire Liberal Party was convulsed with irrepressible enthusiasm and cheered the Premier's announcement for nine minutes, many Members removing their collars and ties and waving them in delirious excitement. ”

“ The Christian Endeavour Union of Washington, alarmed at the spread of luxury, has launched a society whose members pledge themselves to wear no finery during Easter. Those members who hide baldness by means of elaborate coiffures might carry the idea further by appearing, for one week only, with heads like Easter eggs. ”

“ These being the last words I should have expected from him, for he looked absolutely the type that reads only a half-penny daily and a sporting sheet and puts in the rest of its leisure at gossip or cards, and as I am interested in people's taste in literature, I determined to improve his acquaintance and discover something as to his favourite authors; and again, as I made this resolve, I realised how foolish it is ever to expect the outside of a man to be any index of his mind. ”

“ In connection with the "Kensington Camp Week," when an effort is to be made to raise sufficient funds to establish and equip headquarters for the Kensington Reservists, a full-sized elephant has been chartered to ramble about the principal thoroughfares and collect money for the cause. To ensure success the sagacious quadruped is to be trained to step accidentally on the toes of those persons who ignore its appeal. ”

“ Happily, however, there is a brighter side to the picture; signs are not wanting—and each hour, we are sure, will strengthen them—that moderate men in the ranks of our opponents are beginning to share our own indignation and dismay. ”

“ Whether it is due to the Suffrage movement or not it is difficult to say, but women are undoubtedly coming into their rights by degrees. By the provisions of the new Bankruptcy Act it is now possible for any married woman, whether trading apart from her husband or not, to be made a bankrupt. ”

“ Even The Nation is not quite satisfied with the Government, and has been alluding to "the extreme slackness of Cabinet methods," and complains that "situations are not thought out beforehand." The Government, apparently, is now taking the lesson to heart, for H.M.S. Foresight, we read, has now replaced H.M.S. Pathfinder in Belfast Lough.
What the newspapers describe as "An unknown Botticelli" has just been sold by a celebrated firm of art dealers to an American gentleman, and it only remains to hope that the painting was not unknown to Botticelli. ”

“ The applicant for work is usually thrown into a state of nervous prostration by the difficulties that beset his task. By a perusal of the following hints he may learn to acquire an invulnerable calm, and if he follows the directions given he can reckon on surprising results. ”

“ Gradually the horror spent itself; the country became pacified. Except for an occasional sporadic outbreak, the plague was stamped out. It got about that the historical novel was "a dead one," and young America turned to something else. Now you begin to see what Mr. Kester has done. While Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton are publishing John o' Jamestown over in England, another firm is flooding the States with it. ”

“ I interrupted, "how much more splendid if you could be the only man who had seen Monte Carlo without going inside the rooms. And then when the hairdress—when your friends at the club ask if you've had any luck at the tables you just say coldly, 'What tables?'"
"Preferably in Latin," said Archie. "Quae mensæ?"
But it was obviously no good arguing with him. Besides, we were all keen enough to go.
"We needn't lose," said Myra. "We might win."
"Good idea," said Thomas. He lit his pipe and added, "Simpson was telling me about his system last night. ”

“ House of Commons, Thursday.—The Member for Sark, in pursuance of his favourite axiom that there is nothing new under the sun, calls attention to two conversations in which he discovers singularly close parallel in tone and temper. The first will be found in official report of Parliamentary debate. ”

“ This method of leading up to business is much better than the old one, in which you stand and are bullied by a man who has no sort of right over you except that he has employment to offer and you want it badly. ”

“ Simpson is popularly supposed to belong to a Fleet Street Toilet and Hairdressing Club, where for three guineas a year he gets shaved every day, and his hair cut whenever Myra insists. On the many occasions when he authorises a startling story of some well-known statesman with the words: "My dear old chap, I know it for a fact. ”

“ Possibly it was effect of wrestling with it that made Curzon look less joyous than might have been expected, seeing he had realised his disinterested hope, and a second, even more damaging, secession from a stricken Cabinet had been averted.
Lord Curzon (to Lord Morley) . "Must you go? Can't you stay?"
Business done.—In the Commons debate on Second Reading of Home Rule Bill resumed. Atmosphere significantly less stormy than heretofore. ”

“ Venning and Miss Powell were actually cut off by the tide on a treacherous reef of the Cambrian coast it will be realised that The Sentence Absolute is a book for one of those softer moods in which we do not desire to be startled or stung to profound meditation on the meaning of life.
OUR CURIO CRANKS. The man who takes every opportunity of adding to his gallery of Hats of Famous Men. ”

“ The horse was shod, and then—we are afraid the rest of the story makes ugly reading—coolly galloped off without paying.
"After the annexation of Alsace by Germany the baron stayed some years in Paris, and became an intimate friend of Chopin."
Andover Advertiser.
Never realising that Chopin had died more than twenty years before.
From a beauty specialist's advertisement:—
"How a poet of such a 'profound subtlety of instinct for the absolute expression of absolute natural beauty' as Keats could have penned the lines:—
'Beauty is Fat, Fat Beauty. ”

“ A man has been sentenced at Barmen, Prussia, on three separate counts to terms of imprisonment totalling 175 years. It is proposed that all the proprietors of specifics for prolonging life shall be given a free hand to enable the prisoner to cope with his sentence. ”

“ Tell me, what is the joke to this one?"
"Many a man whose courage would not respond to the spur of some huge burglar would die rather than be beaten by a wretched little collar stud."—Times.
The only burglar we have ever met was (luckily) in the Infantry. [Pg 276]
AT THE PLAY. "Things we'd like to know."
Almost the last thing that you expect in a starting-price bookie is a strong penchant for poetry. It is true that I have before me, as I write, a Turf Commissioner's telegraphic code which contains some rather picturesque symbols. Thus "amber" is the codeword for £1; "heliotrope" for £20 ”

“ I didn't wait."
"Samuel, you are quite well inside, aren't you?"
"Quite, Myra. But I have invented a sort of system for roulette, which we might——"
"There's only one system which is any good," pronounced Archie. "It's the system by which, when you've lost all your own money, you turn to the man next to you and say, 'Lend me a louis, dear old chap, till Christmas ”

“ Seely's brief statement, dignified in [Pg 274] its simplicity, unexceptional in its good taste, listened to by both sides with evident sympathy. During two years' administration of War Office affairs, he has by straightforwardness, urbanity, and display of perfect command of his subject, increased the personal popularity enjoyed whilst he was yet a private Member.
Business done.—Resignation by Colonel Seely of War Office portfolio announced. ”