Various

“ For those interested in criminology I may say that all the best criminal devices are not necessarily planned beforehand to the end; they are begun any-old-how and the genius consists in carrying the thing through afterwards, much the same as running a great war. I recked not what might occur after I had nefariously induced the poor innocent to install the machine; perhaps I had some vague idea that the Englishman's house is his castle, though this seems ridiculous when considered calmly. ”

“ It is nearly always a good thing for the author of a play to know what he is after, and if he can get his audience to follow him so much the better. It is quite possible that Mr. Esmond had an idea in his head when he wrote Birds of a Feather, but if so he never let me get at it. Up to the very end I had no conception of what he was trying to illustrate, unless it was the trite theory that we are the creatures of our environment.
That, at any rate, was how Constance (of "the House of Ussher") explained her vagaries, though I couldn't see why. ”

“ The whole vast pleasure-ground really centres round them, and the reason why Londoners flock (as the papers say) to Kew is that they are hungry for the medicinal virtues of this aquaceous plant.
After you have taken the watercresses you are allowed to wander about the Gardens again and look at Queen Victoria's cottage, round which there is always an eager and admiring crowd examining it from every point of view and wondering what premium they would have to pay for it if it were on the market now. ”

“ Blanketed hunters are having their legs rubbed or being led up and down by grooms. Comes a broken-winded tootle on a coach-horn and the black-and-scarlet drag of the local garrison trundles into view. The unsophisticated gun-horses in the lead shy violently at the flapping canvas of an orange-stall and swerve to the left into a roulette-booth presided over by a vociferous ancient in a tattered overcoat and blue spectacles. The gamblers scatter like flushed partridges and the ancient bites the turf beneath his upturned board amid a shower of silver coins. ”

“ Bonar Law was at first very stiff in his attitude, pointing out quite reasonably that if the Government found it necessary to intern people suspected of crime it was absurd to let them out again because they threatened to commit suicide. Several Members, English as well as Irish, thought that there was a case for differentiating between convicted prisoners and those who were merely under suspicion, and on the adjournment the Irish Attorney-General a little relieved the prevailing gloom by a hint that some modification of the prison-rules might be made on these lines. ”

“ The scene is an Irish Point-to-Point meeting.
The course lies along a shallow valley, bounded on the north by a wall of cloudy blue mountains.
At each jump stands a group of spectators; the difficulty or danger of an obstacle may be measured by the number of spectators who stand about it, recounting tales of past accidents and hoping cheerfully for the future. Motor cars, side-cars, waggonettes, pony-traps and ass-carts are drawn up anyhow round a clump of whitewashed farm buildings in the background. ”

“ You are not even compelled to leave the gravel-walks and tread on the damp grass, unless you have a desire to go to the river's edge and see how stiffly the tail of the Duke of Northumberland's stone lion sticks out on the further bank between the two peel towers from which his crossbowmen contemplate the Surrey marshes. ”

“ The secret of her charm lies deeper, in the power to interpret and convey emotions in the language of her art. To watch her feet alone is to hear the shuddering sigh of her Dying Swan, but her whole body is alert to translate every nuance of her theme. ”

“ No, of course don't bother about the twopence" (visitors always want calls just outside the radius; I do myself) .
The crisis came in March. It was then that I joined the criminal classes. For many days I had haunted the telephone dump, taking a melancholy pleasure in watching real engineers come out with real coin-boxes for other people. No Peri at the golden gate ever looked more wistful. I know now that it is opportunity that makes the criminal, and one day the opportunity came. ”

“ It sounds a little inconsistent, but of course there may have been a nice differentiation in the old rogue's mind between a moral and a criminal offence, in favour of the latter.
As for Constance I have seldom met a less seizable character. If she was the result of environment there was no visible sign to show how it infected her. We simply had to take Mr. Esmond's word for it. To me the ménage seemed to be of the most respectable. But, of course, you can always attribute anything to your surroundings. One environment is vicious and so drives you to vice ”

“ One goes to Kew to take the watercresses. I have found out by exhaustive inquiries from one of the waitresses that, though you may substitute rolls and butter for bread and margarine, and may have marmalade with either or both, and though it is optional to eat even the cakes with yellow sugar upon them, there is no way of evading the watercresses. There is a strong feeling amongst the waitresses that it is just these compulsory watercresses which have made us Englishmen what we are. ”

“ For instance, it is a mistake to confuse Auction Bridge with Rugby football. I have known players who declared "Two No-trumps" in very much the same manner as that in which a Rugby football-player throws the opposing three-quarter over the side-line. Excessive aggression is a mistake. A young Civil Servant of my acquaintance even went so far as to abstain from claiming an obvious revoke when the delinquent was the chief of his department. Unfortunately, however, this young man, so wise in other ways, had the annoying habit of turning his chair to bring him luck. ”

“ That is why I like going down to Kew, where the Spring is tidy and concentrated, and there is a squared map, just like France, at the turnstile gate to direct you to the magnolia dump, and little notices pointing you to the Temperate Houses, though this is really unnecessary, because there are no licensed premises in the Gardens at Kew. All is quiet and calm. ”

“ Was it her environment that taught her to say dreadful things like "Put that in your pipe and smoke it"? The cheap fun that she got out of a girl-friend who had made it a rule to pray for her was the kind of thing you would be sorry to find in a common boarding-school. And are gentlefolk in the habit of asking a man, as Constance did, how it was that he ever came to get engaged to such a woman as the one of his choice? ”

“ Here you may see the prosperous docker with his wife and family sitting quite unostentatiously at the next table to the needy scientist who has come to make notes about the purple narcissi. And a little further on is the novelist who is getting local colour for his great rustic love-scene which he is going to say took place in the heart of Devonshire.
But it was not for the purpose of providing you with tea and cakes that the Pump-room was founded. Just as you may read in your morning paper that the Honourable Miss Muffet has proceeded to Harrogate to take the waters, so it is with Kew. ”

“ Perhaps asking him to have a glass of port was a mistake there are times when even bribery is bad policy. Briefly, after a mumbled remark that "there was something fishy," he refused to leave the box. Dry-eyed we watched him take it all down and depart in a dudgeon. We were left with a vision of shameless visitors with their twopenny calls and interminable bills running up even while we were away on our holidays.
"Let us," I said hoarsely—"let us go and look at our child; she is all we have left now." ”

“ The daughter of a very rich Jew, whose Christian wife had run away from him, she was brought up in great comfort, which included the love of a peer's son, her father's secretary. It is true that her stern parent would not hear of their union; but that has no doubt happened to young heiresses before now without turning them into criminals. With Constance however it seems to have been different. ”

“ It is true that the English judge who should have gone on Assize had fallen ill, and there was no other to take his place. But Osman Effendi saw in this too the malevolent hand of the English, who nourished a grudge against him. "How," he said, "can I obtain justice if there is no Englishman on the Court?"
From that moment he has become an ultra-Nationalist, and has, I believe, been seen in the streets of Cairo shouting with the best of them the latest "English" catchword of "Long Live Egypt! Long Die Milner!"
He is, you see, an educated man. ”

“ She can draw beauty even from an anticlimax. Again and again in Snowflakes, when her partner withdrew the support of his hand, she poised for a moment, and, when the poise had to cease, covered her descent with the most fascinating gestures of head and arms. ”

“ The Railway Police-Sergeant briskly inquired his name, address, occupation and all the rest of it. Hobbs gave a good account of himself and mentioned that he had worked in our family for forty-two years.
"Any visiting-cards, correspondence or other papers to identify you?" asked the Sergeant mechanically. He had said it so often to the people who cry "Season! Season!" when there is no Season. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to add that the author is an old literary hand, with a pleasantly clear and luminous style of his own, though one is free to admit he splits his infinitives almost as much as Sir Ian Hamilton split his forces, and with less justification.
In the very improving books which I had to read long ago the hero or heroine usually had a cross to bear. They bore it with great fortitude, and frequently died young. ”

“ Parents in New York who are afraid of losing their children may register them at the Bureau of Missing People. As we have no such institution in this country parents must adopt the old method of writing their names and addresses on the top right-hand corner of their offspring. ”

“ What actually happens when you want to open one is that you plunge halfway through a deep quagmire, climb on to a slippery stone, wrestle with a piece of hoop-iron, some barbed wire and some pieces of furze, lift the gate up by the bottom bar and wade through the rest of the quagmire carrying it on your shoulder.
If you are riding like Lord Hugo you hook the fastening of the gate with the handle of your crop and make your horse shunt slowly backwards by applying the reverse clutch with your feet. ”

“ I need not further detail the crooked course of untrue love, though I may hint at a fault in balance, where your sympathy, previously and rightly enlisted for poor betrayed Fred, is demanded for Gerda in her difficulty with the almond. As usual, Miss Young unfolds her plot with admirable directness, chiefly through a natural and unforced dialogue, so easy that it disguises its own art.
If any reasonable man still possesses a grain of sympathy with Bolshevism I invite him to purge himself by reading With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia (Cassell) . ”

“ My efforts were rewarded. In late [pg 308] February three people came and left three coin-boxes—in pieces. Then I must admit that I did a foolish thing. I wrote and said that I only wanted one box. I was afraid that if I kept them all it would be, a case of "Thr-r-ree pennies, please," instead of one. (Mine is a penny district) .
It annoyed them all. They came and took all the boxes away again—jealousy, I suppose. So at the end of February I was back in my old trenches again and visitors were still saying, "Oh, do you mind if I ring up So-and-so?" ”

“ And then you will want to go home and be unable to find the gate; but after a little time the Observator will observe you with his telescope from the top of the Pagoda and mention it to the Curator, who will direct a bronzed and amiable man in a blue uniform to lead you to the turnstile.
I am told that there are some people who do not care to sample their Spring at Kew or in the country either, but prefer to go to San Remo or spend Saturday afternoon toiling in their own back-garden. Let them mind their peas, I say, while I go down to Kew. ”

“ Little green oases were to be seen in every part of the House, and on the Treasury Bench even Under-Secretaries (who often have to maintain a precarious perch on one another's knees) had room to spread themselves.
The Underground Railway may, like Nature, be careless of the individual, but it is extremely careful of the typewriter, and insists on making a special charge for this instrument, officially regarded as a bicycle. ”

“ There is a man living in the Edgware Road, it is stated, who has never been on an omnibus. He has often seen them whizzing by, he declares, but has always resisted the temptation to take the fatal plunge. ”

“ Our sympathy is with the young Flight Lieutenant of the R.A.F. who has been unable to keep up with the uniforms designed by the Air Ministry. He is now said to be three uniforms behind.
It is claimed that whilst standing on a certain rock near Aberdeen one can obtain a thousand echoes from a single shout. We understand that the local habit of going there in order to pull a cork out of a bottle has now been prohibited owing to the annoyance caused to American visitors. ”

“ We are in a position to deny a report which was being spread in connection with a certain Model Village scheme, to the effect that the model bricklayer had refused to perform unless he was provided with a model public-house, while the model public-house could not be provided until the model bricklayer started work.
Bonnet strings, says a fashion paper, will be worn by débutantes this summer. Apron strings, we gather, will continue to be unfashionable with our flappers. ”

“ The supposed victim was obviously delighted to be rid of the responsibility for a policy which seems to grow more tangled every day. Only on Tuesday Mr. Bonar Law was assuring the House that the Mountjoy hunger-strikers must be left to commit suicide if they chose; the Government could not release men suspected of grave crimes. ”