Various

“ That is another burden I cheerfully shoulder, and by this method my admirers are kept fully acquainted with what I may call the real me—with the heart that beats beneath the shadowed counterfeit. Nevertheless at times the most absurd rumours get abroad. Recently, for example, I saw it stated in quite a reputable organ that my favourite jam is blackberry-and-apple; as a matter of fact I find all jams ruinous to the figure, and as a tea-relish I usually limit myself to the more ascetic bloater-paste, with salmon-and-shrimp as an occasional variant. ”

“ It will be remembered that a few weeks ago London in general and the West-End in particular was excited and delighted by the announcement that Apsley House had been sold to an influential syndicate and would shortly be converted into a massive and monumental block, forty storeys high, crowned with the dancing-saloon and including a concert-hall with the most powerful organ in the world, and a swimming-bath with salt water conveyed by a special pipe from Brighton. ”

“ You who know me only as the reigning queen of countless Palaces may possibly imagine that my life is spent in flitting butterfly-fashion from film to film, existing only for the golden moment. But one is not born a butterfly, nor does one remain so without constant effort. ”

“ One sits with one's feet up in a first-class carriage, clutching a nice cheap workman's ticket and trying hard to look as if, like the Bolshevists, one did this every day.
On arriving at the Monument Station one walks briskly past the seductive announcement that "The Monument is Now Open," and plunges into a world of fish. I have never been able to understand why fish is so funny. ”

“ It may be of interest, by the way, to state that I am myself partly of Gallic extraction, my mother having been a Lyons girl before she was enabled to open a tea-shop of her own; and, although born and bred in what I am proud to call my native country, I can even now act just as fluently in a French film as in an all-British production.
But I must not let my thoughts run away with my pen, fascinating though such cross-country excursions may be. To return to my appointed topic, heavy indeed is the burden that is laid on the back of a cinema star. ”

“ He is a very clever man.
They stand round looking at the boxes of fish, and when one of them twitches the flesh of his nose or faintly moves one of his eyelashes it means that he has bought six stone of whiting for thirty shillings. That is the only kind of sign they give, and the visitor will be wise not to catch the auctioneer's eye, or blow his nose or do any overt action like that, or he may find that he has bought six stone of salmon and halibut for forty-five shillings. ”

“ It must be a hard life. Yet if I thought I could pick up six stone of salmon and plaice and throw it about I should sign on at Billingsgate at once. It is true they start work about five; but they stop work, it seems, about ten, and they earn a pound and over for that. Then they can go home. Most of them, I imagine, are stockbrokers during the rest of the day.
And they are a refined and gentlemanly body of men. I hope the old legend that the fish-porter of Billingsgate expresses himself in terms too forcible for the ordinary man is now exploded ”

“ Steadily, maliciously, the great fish slide off the stalls on to the floor; steadily the dealers recover them and pile them up on their small counters, or cast them through the air on to other counters, or fling them into baskets in rage or mortification or sheer bravado.
The dealers are men with business-faces, in long white coats, surprisingly clean. Every now and then they stop throwing crabs into baskets or retrieving halibut from the floor, and make little entries in long note-books. ”

“ At the far end of the market is the river Thames; and on the river Thames there is a ship or two chockful of fish. Fish-porters with a kind of blasé animation run up and down a long gangway to the ship with six-stone boxes of fine fresh whiting on their heads. These boxes they pile up on a chute (carefully noting each box in their note-books) , after which an auctioneer auctions the boxes. ”

“ Fish is still rushing in at one end from the ship and is rushing in at the other from the railway-vans. The porters are throwing the fish at the dealers' stalls (registering each hit in their note-books) , and the dealers are throwing it on to the floor or throwing it at each other or trying to throw it at a retailer, who always puts on a haughty air and passes on to the next stall, till he too gets entangled in the game and finds that he has bought twenty-four stone of whiting at twopence a pound ”

“ There are some forty-odd bits in A Bit at a Time (Mills and Boon) , and they embrace a variety of subjects, ranging from crocuses in Kensington Gardens to corpse-boats on the Tigris. They are all, whether sentimental, satirical or pathetic, fiction of the lightest type. Such literature was eminently readable during the War—most of Mr. Dion Clayton Calthrop's bits have to do with somebody's "bit"—when a touch of conventional pathos and pretended cynicism and a generous padding of humour, real or forced, provided sufficient relaxation from the strain of anxious hours. ”

“ The dealers or the dealers' agents stand round in a hungry ring and buy the boxes of fish as they slide down the chute. The dealers seem to detail a less cultured type of man for this purpose, and few of the bidders come up to the standard of refinement of the fish-porters. ”

“ There were no miner poets on Boar's Hill. Their motto was Majora canamus.
Professor Gilbert Murray, who followed, laid stress on the perfect harmony which reigned amongst the residents, in spite of the fact that all schools of poetry were represented, from the austerest of classicists to the most advanced exponents of Neo-Georgian vers libre. They were a happy family, linked together by a common devotion to the Muses, and in their daily output of verse showing a higher unit of production than that recorded of any other community in either hemisphere. ”

“ Lloyd George, "the Government will certainly do so." Our own view is that they should be protected even if it means sending the Reserve of Special Constables to do it.
According to the Ministry of Transport, there is only one motor-car to every one hundred and twenty people in Great Britain. The necessity of fixing a maximum bag of pedestrians per car does not therefore arise.
A purple-eyed fish, eleven feet long, with a horn on its nose and no teeth, has been caught at San Diego, California. ”

“ Meanwhile about a million fish-porters are dashing up and down the narrow avenues between the fish-stalls, porting millions of boxes of fish. Nearly all of them, I am glad to say, have been [pg 469] in the army or have had a relative in the army; for they are nearly all wearing the full uniform of a company cook, which needs no description. On their heads they have a kind of india-rubber hat, and on the india-rubber hat they have a large box of fish weighing about six stone—six stone, I tell you. This box they handle as if it was a box of cigars. They pick it up with a careless gesture ”

“ The whole question of the de facto Government of Russia is so fiercely controversial that it is not to be expected that such a work should escape violent criticism from those for whom that Government can do no wrong, though the writer justly claims that (however obvious his own views) he has striven to be strictly fair to those of the enemy. ”

“ A man aged seventy-six was charged last week with threatening to shoot a West-End family of six. It is said that his parents intend to plead the baneful influence of the cinema.
The fact that at least seven people have expressed their intention of swimming the English Channel this year draws attention once more to the lack of accommodation on our cross-Channel steamers.
A wheelbarrow has been presented to the parishioners of Hornchurch, Essex. We have maintained all along that the motor-car craze would wear itself out in time. ”

“ Lloyd George replied that, according to the evidence of anti-Bolshevist refugees, there were quantities of grain and raw materials awaiting export, while in regard to the general question he poured much rhetorical contempt on the argument that we were never to trade with a country that was misgoverned. What about Turkey? What about Mexico? "You cannot always examine the records of your customers." ”

“ Virgil Onderdonk, of converting the site of Apsley House to the uses of a super-dancing-saloon. Mr. Flather is a convinced opponent of the dancing mania and President of the Anti-Tarantulation League, while Mr. Onderdonk has always been a profound admirer of the great Duke of Wellington. Subject to the approval of the present Duke it is our intention to re-erect Apsley House on the Playing Fields at Eton, and utilise the site for the building of flats for the New Poor."
"The erection of a Neo-Georgian super-dancing-saloon on the Piccadilly frontage of Apsley House," said Mr. ”

“ In order to see Billingsgate properly in action it is necessary to get up at half-past four and travel on the Underground by the first train East, which is an adventure in itself. The first train East goes at three minutes past five, and there are large numbers of people who travel in it every day ”

“ At first blush you would hardly think it necessary to include the City Corporation among the local authorities who may establish aerodromes. The "one square mile" does not offer much encouragement to the airman who wishes to make a safe landing. ”

“ Gedge said it were a patriotic duty to give th' lads a bit of amusement when they came on leave, an' 'e 'd undertake the Rileys 'ud make no objection when Hosea coom home. But it made a lot 'o coolness atween th' families, an' when Hosea were wounded in '15 the Bennettses as good as said th' Rileys weren't no better nor pro-Germans in not giving up their claim to th' tarrier. Public opinion were with Hosea at that time, but it veered round to George when 'e won th' Military Medal in '16. ”

“ In Murray's Guide to Oxfordshire it had been spoken of as "a health resort for jaded students," but that was an obsolete libel. Constitutionally vigorous and daily refreshed by draughts from the pellucid springs of the Pierides, they led a life of exuberant health, as the vital statistics of the neighbourhood would abundantly show. On Boar's Hill people began to write poetry earlier and continued to do so later than in any other spot in the British Isles.
Sir Arthur Evans, in proposing a vote of thanks to the Chairman, made the gratifying announcement that Mr. ”