Various

“ Intuitively she divined the bitterness of the mood which lay beneath the torturer's seeming cheerfulness, but she stifled her curiosity like the wise little woman she was and hastened to lay his supper before him. Through the progress of the meal—prepared by her in the way the torturer loved so well—she diverted him with her lively prattle. And at length, when she trod on the dog and caused it to give out a long-drawn howl, she made such a neat allusion to the Chamber and heretics that the torturer laughed till the tears streamed down his cheeks. ”

“ The Law Courts are like all our public buildings. The parts where the public is allowed to go are fairly respectable, if not beautiful, but the purlieus and the basements and the upper floors are scenes of unimaginable dinginess and decay. The Law Courts' purlieus are worse than the Houses of Parliament's purlieus, and it seems to me that even more disgraceful things are done in them. It only shows you the danger of Nationalisation. ”

“ Across the middle of the cage a stout barricade has been erected, and behind the barricade sits the Master, pale but defiant. Masters in Chambers are barristers who have not got proper legal faces, and have had to give up being ordinary barristers on that account; in the obscurity and excitement [Pg 336] of the Bear-Garden nobody notices that their faces are all wrong. The two chief bears rush at the Master and the other bears jostle round them, egging them on. When they see that they cannot get at the Master they begin snarling. ”

“ There are all sorts of bears, most of them rather seedy old bears, with shaggy and unkempt coats. These are solicitors' clerks, and they all come straight out of Dickens. They have shiny little private-school handbags, each inherited, no doubt, through a long line of ancestral solicitors' clerks; and they all have the draggled sort of moustache that tells you when it is going to rain. While they are pacing up and down the arena they all try to get rid of these moustaches by pulling violently at alternate ends; but the only result is to make it look more like rain than ever. ”

“ The coming ordeal so preyed upon my mind that I spent a most restless night, during which, so Suzanne afterwards told me, I announced at frequent intervals the popping of the weasel. The day dawned with a steady drizzle of rain, and, after a poor attempt at breakfast, I scoured the neighbourhood for a taxi. Having at last run one to earth, I packed the expedition into it—Suzanne, Timothy, Timothy's nurse and Barbara (who begged so hard to be allowed to "come and see Father make faces at Baby" that Suzanne weakly consented) . ”

“ They are all snarling and roaring in a large preliminary arena, where the bears prepare themselves for the struggle; all round it are smaller cages or arenæ, where the struggles take place. If possible you ought to go early, so that you can watch the animals massing. Lawyers, as I have had occasion to observe before, are the most long-suffering profession in the country, and the things they do in the Bear-Garden they have to do in the luncheon-hour, or rather in the luncheon half-hour, between half-past one and two.
This accounts perhaps for the extreme frenzy of the proceedings. ”

“ The earth shivers as if a volcano is beneath our feet. The pock-marked ridges in the distance are covered with the advancing waves of field-grey forms. Our boys are going up happily shouting and singing to the battle. ”

“ You can always make him laugh better than anyone else; it's your métier. And I do want his delicious little dimples to come out."
"Do I understand that I'm to go through my répertoire in cold blood and under the unsympathetic gaze of Messrs. Snapper and Klick? Suzanne, it can't be done." ”

“ It is not quite easy to see why, because ladies have taken to smoking cigarettes, an extra heavy duty should be imposed on imported cigars; or how the appearance of "a new class of champagne-drinkers" justifies a further tax upon the humble consumer of "dinner-claret." ”

“ Nor is it easy to follow the process of reasoning by which the Chancellor convinced himself that the Excess Profits Tax, which last year he described as a great deterrent to enterprise and industry, only, justifiable as "a temporary measure," should now be not merely continued but increased by fifty per cent.
Mr. Chamberlain. "I don't care what anybody says about this blooming tree (I use the epithet in its literal sense) ; I shall let it keep on for another year."
This proposal seemed to excite more hostility than any other. ”

“ Hardly ever turning aside to praise or blame, he says with almost unqualified baldness a multitude of astounding things—things we half knew, or guessed, or longed to have explained, or dared not whisper, or, most of all, never dreamt of. ”

“ Snapper and Klick are continually worrying me to have Baby taken. Once a week regularly, ever since the announcement of his birth appeared, they've rung me up to ask when he will give them a sitting. Sometimes it's Snapper and sometimes it's Klick; I don't know which is which, but one of them has adenoids. ”

“ The fact that New York can still see things like this must be a sorry blow to the Prohibitionists.
"Working men have been hit very hard by the tyrannical Budget," announces a morning paper. We too are in sympathy with those miners who are now faced with only one bottle of champagne a day.
"These cotton boom profits," said the President of the Textile Institute recently, "are abnormal and unhealthy." ”

“ This may cause delay; so that if you are feeling particularly strongly about anything it is probably better to have it out in the street and risk being taken for a gentleman.
There are a number of other interesting functionaries on the way to the Bear-Garden; but we must get on. When you have wandered about in the purlieus for a long time you will hear a tremendous noise, a sort of combined snarling and roaring and legal conversation. When you hear that, you will know that you are very near the bears. ”

“ According to Colonel Burn the Army of the Rhine is now so short of men that it is compelled to employ German civilians as batmen, clerks and even telephone-operators; and Mr. Churchill was fain to admit that it would not surprise him to hear that "some assistance has been derived from the local population." ”

“ It is thought that there is at least a sporting chance that some of them will be hoist with their own bacon.
"The man who does not know Latin," says the Dean of Durham, "is not really educated." Several uneducated business men are said to have written to the Dean asking the Latin for what they think of the new Budget.
At a recent wedding in Tyrone young men who had come to wish the bride and bridegroom luck lit a fire against the door, blocked the chimney with straw, broke the windows, threw water and cayenne-pepper on the wedding-party and bombarded the house with stones for two hours. ”

“ In fact, if you want to get to it, you have to use that title. The proper title would be something like "the place where Masters in Chambers function at half-past one;" but, if you go into the Law Courts and ask one of the attendants where that is, he will say, rather pityingly, "Do you mean the Bear-Garden?" and you will know at once that you have lost caste. Caste is a thing you should be very careful of in these days, so the best thing is to ask for the Bear-Garden straightaway.
It is in the purlieus of the Law Courts and very hard to find. ”

“ The country clergy are without doubt the most over-rated persons in the country—I mean, of course, from a fiscal point of view. Consequently the House gave a friendly reception to a Bill intended to relieve them of some of their pecuniary burdens. ”

“ He did his best incidentally, by rowing away without casting off, to corroborate the local legend that the queer little island sometimes disappeared. Miss Mary Jerrold was just the perfect Barrie mother (of Mary Rose) . Mr. Arthur Whitby's parson, Mr. Norman Forbes' squire, Miss Jean Cadell's housekeeper, left no chinks in their armour for a critic's spleenful arrow.
T.
"It was one of those perfect June nights that so seldom occur except in August." ”

“ The claims of small nations could not, of course, be overlooked, but he considered it as little short of a calamity when a Great Power had an undersized Prime Minister. Short men liked short cuts, but, as Bacon said, the shortest way is commonly the foulest. ”

“ Supposing, for instance, in twenty or thirty years' time he marries a Movie Queen——"
Just then the telephone-bell rang, and Suzanne, as is her wont, rushed to [Pg 328] answer it, dropping Timothy into my arms on the way.
"Hello!" I heard her say. "Yes; speaking. Yes, I was just going to write. Yes; that will do quite well. What? Yes, about eleven. Good-bye."
"Not another appointment with the dressmaker?" I inquired.
"No. Curiously enough it was Klick again—or Snapper—and his adenoids are worse than ever; I suppose it's the damp weather gets into them. So I said we'd take Baby to-morrow." ”

“ The best Sinn Feiners are very punctilious.
"The drinking of intoxicants," says an American prohibitionist, "causes early death in ninety-five cases out of a hundred." Several Americans, we are informed, have gallantly offered themselves for experimental purposes.
"It is a scandal," says a contemporary, "that the clerks at Llanelly should ask for twelve pounds fifteen shillings a week." ”

“ Just at first it is rather disturbing to hear snatches of conversation like that, but there is no real cause for alarm; they are only identifying themselves with the interests of their clients; and, when one realises that, one is rather touched.
At long last one of the keepers at the entrance to the small cages begins to shout very loudly. It is not at all clear what he is shouting, but apparently it is the pet-names of the bears, for there is a wild rush for the various cages. ”

“ Gentlemen possessing both town and country sets of suitings are in many cases letting the latter in order to come up to London for the season, whilst others are resorting to various economical artifices to meet the crisis. Plus four golf knickers, let down, make admirable wedding trousers for a short man, and many are the old college blazers dyed black and doing duty as natty pea-jackets. ”

“ We were ushered into the studio by a gentleman I now know to have been Mr. Klick. He aroused my distrust at once by the fact that he did not wear a velvet coat, and I pointed out this artistic deficiency in a whisper to Suzanne.
"Never mind," she whispered back; "we needn't buy any if they're not good."
Timothy, who had by now been put straight by his attendant, was carefully placed on all-fours on a pile of cushions, which he promptly proceeded to chew. Mr. ”

“ Many tailors who have built new suits are beginning to dispose of them on three or five year repairing leases, and possession of these may sometimes be secured from the present occupiers on payment of a substantial premium. ”

“ Norris himself could say offhand what its number is. Sara and her circle are eminently characteristic of their creator. You have here the same well-bred well-to-do persons, pleasantly true to their decorous type, retaining always, despite modernity of clothes and circumstance, a gentle aroma of late Victorianism. Perhaps Sara is the most immediate of Mr.Norris's heroines so far. Her money-bags had been filled in Manchester, and from time to time in her history you are reminded of this circumstance. It explains much ”

“ How many readers, for instance, will realise that German East Africa was almost twice the size of Germany? The translation on the whole is good, [Pg 340] though some phrases such as "the at times barely sufficient ration" are rather too redolent of the Fatherland.
I see that on the title-page of his latest story Mr. W. E. Norris is credited with having already written two others (specified by name) , etc. ”

“ New proposals regarding telephone charges are expected as soon as the Select Committee has reported. If the system of charging by time in place of piece-work is adopted it will mean ruination to many business-men. ”

“ The War in Home waters is no less fascinatingly reconstructed, and the case of maps contains in itself living epics for all who study them with understanding.
In writing her second book Miss Hilda M. Sharp has allowed herself what is, I suspect, the lady novelist's greatest treat, the extraordinary achievement of using the first person singular and making it masculine. She has done it very well too, and I am happy to recall that, in another place, I was among the many who prophesied good concerning her future when she made her début as a novelist with The Stars in their Courses in Mr. ”