Various

“ I said to Hilda. "If you impute to a person a virtue he does not possess he probably denies that he has it, but he is really flattered and his denial is not sincere. He would be willing to pay on it; he would rather pay than not."
At this point Peter grew tired of refraining from comment. "I don't want you to suppose," he said, "that I am taking any interest in your fatuous scheme, but doesn't it occur to you that under your system it would be simply ruinous to have any virtues at all, and that the only people who would flourish would be those who had no virtues and were not ashamed of it?" ”

“ The slightest flicker of a conscience in Park Lane would be more heavily mulcted than the most blameless life in Bermondsey. But the main point is that under my system taxation would become the measure of a man's moral worth, and people who did not pay taxes would be simply out of it. All the plums would go the highly-taxed men. Their tax receipts would be certificates of character, and the more they earned the more the Treasury would be able to get out of them. ”

“ You, reader, are one of those ignorant people who do so much discredit to our Public Schools. You fondly think that the whitebait is a special kind of fish, that there are father whitebaits and mother whitebaits and baby whitebaits. You are wrong. There are only baby whitebaits. At least there are baby herrings and baby pilchards, and these are called whitebait because they are eaten by the mackerel and because they look white when they are swimming upside down.
Anyhow Walter and John and Isabel and Margaret and Rupert and Stéphanie and little Foch began life as whitebait. ”

“ From their appearance they would seem to be a typical husband and wife of the working-class on holiday, and it occurs to me that, given the clothes and the diamonds, they might well be occupying the wicker-chairs of the couple opposite. Evidently the sight of somebody or something in the hotel porch has excited them greatly, for they continue to stare up at us with a hostile concentration that renders them quite unconscious of the frantic efforts of the small child who accompanies them to tug them towards the beach. ”

“ Here and there in the drab routine of modern existence it is still possible to catch an occasional glimpse of romance and courageous living, and in the volume which lies before us as we write we are given a generous measure of peril and adventure in faery seas forlorn. From Whitebait to Kipper: The Story of Seven Lives, is the vivid record of a family of herrings, set down (posthumously, it would seem) with refreshing simplicity by Walter Herring, the youngest and perhaps the most brilliant of the family. ”

“ But the assessment of your virtues by the Board of Inland Revenue would prove their existence to yourself and to all the world."
"Except his wife," said Hilda.
"Her evidence would not be accepted. If you had paid taxation for the possession of a virtue, the receipt would be a guarantee that you did possess that particular virtue, and it would consequently be a source of profound moral satisfaction to you. You would pay with pleasure. Besides, it is a poor kind of virtue that will not abide a test. The tax would be a test. Suppose that five pounds was levied upon you for honesty. ”

“ There were now four of the family who had not been eaten by anyone. It is extraordinary when you come to think of it that any herring ever contrives to reach maturity at all. What with the mackerel and the seagulls and the barristers, everybody seems to be against it. However, Walter, Rupert and Foch succeeded. Stéphanie just missed. Walter and Rupert and Foch had jolly soft roes, a fact which is recorded in a cynical little poem by the precocious Foch, believed to be the only literary work of a whitebait now extant. ”

“ Rolls-Royce, seemingly unconscious of the interest of Charteris and our host, who are looking at him covertly as at some zoological specimen, relights his cigar and sits glowering across the road, and silence falls upon the scene—a silence broken at last by the lady in the diamonds, who has resumed her languid pose in the wicker-chair.
"'Orrible people!" she observes, addressing the occupants of the porch generally. "Nice state o' things when you can't even be safe from 'em in yer own 'otel. You don't seem to be able to get away from these low-class people hanywhere—you don't reely!" ”

“ At present the man, somewhat flushed with champagne, is smoking an enormous cigar with a red-and-gold band round it, while the lady, her diamonds flashing in the sunshine, leans back in her chair and regards with supercilious eyes the holiday crowds that throng the pavement below. ”

“ Once upon a time I was so rash as to ridicule this interruption. I drew attention to the fact that the ancient heroes of the game had been able to dispense with it. Alfred Mynn needed no Asiatic stimulant between lunch and the close of play. Even such wholehearted moderns as Hornby and Shrewsbury and Grace managed to do well without the support of Hyson or Bohea. For more than a century cricket and tea were strangers and cricket did not suffer. And so on. But the attacks were futile: the tea interval became an institution ”

“ One herring in his time plays many parts (Shakespeare) ; he can seldom say with confidence what exactly he will be to-morrow; but he can be fairly certain that it won't be a fresh herring. Of our three survivors Rupert alone was to win the coveted distinction. He grew to be a fine boy and was eaten at Hammersmith, where his plump but delicate roe gave the greatest satisfaction. ”

“ Rolls-Royce, conscious of the curious gaze of the entire company, pulls himself together and regards his accuser unfavourably.
"First I've 'eard of it," he growls. "Where was the balloon anyway? In the road, I s'pose?"
"Yes, it was in the road," retorts the other defiantly, "where it's got every right to be. Road's there for the convenience of b'loon-fliers just as much as for motor-cars. More."
"Look 'ere, that's enough of it," says the car-owner harshly. "If the balloon got run over it's yer own fault for letting it go in the road." ”

“ The situation, of course, you have met with before, but as remodelled you might call it—
THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE; or, The Bad Fairy Foiled.
A certain King and Queen had one daughter, to whose christening they invited a large company, forgetting as usual a particularly important and bad-tempered Fairy, who signified her annoyance in the usual manner.
The attendants of the little Princess (having read their story-books) were preparing dolefully enough to fall asleep for a hundred years, when the Fairy, with a contemptuous sniff, remarked that the spell would not take effect for some time yet. ”

“ Apart from anything else it is pleasant to have a book that deals only with the days of victory; but it must be admitted that, to gain a completeness of detail so entirely satisfactory to those most nearly concerned, the writer has had to sacrifice something of human interest, for many of his pages are little more than a bare chronicle of names and places. ”

“ Now when we land at Lochrie Bay to-morrow it will be nearly lunch-time; but shall we get lunch?"
"I can answer that," replied MacFadden, whose grandfather was a Scotsman, and who was once in Edinburgh for a week; "the map shows it is only five miles to Waterfoot, and there's sure to be an hotel there. Those little Scots inns are all right."
"Yes," chimed in Sylvia, "and very likely there'll be nothing to eat when we get there. I am thinking of you three men, of course," she added hastily; "we girls don't want much." ”

“ If there is one thing that a herring cannot stand it is to be separated from his roe. Walter's roe was ruthlessly torn from him and served up separate on toast, with nothing to show that it was the glorious roe of Walter. ”

“ It is the length of it and the empty pitch that are so depressing to the spectator, and it is the return to the pavilion that is so detrimental to the rhythm of the game. Neither of the batsmen ever wants the interruption, and I have often noticed a reluctance in certain members of the fielding side. As for the watchers, they never fail to groan.
Still, as I have said, it is now recognised that the craving for tea is as much a part of the present-day game as the six-ball over, and the time has passed for censuring it. But something can be done to regulate it ”

“ The rich and well-fed Americans who will not trouble to understand, the grotesque Chinamen and Annamites, the starving Russians liberated from the Germans, flash by, with the ruins of villages, the tangle of wire and litter of derelict guns ”

“ The scene of it is Burmah—astonishing, when you consider the host of novels about the rest of India, that so few should employ this equally picturesque setting—and it is quickly apparent that what Mr. C.C. Lowis doesn't know at first hand about Rangoon is not likely to be missed. The tale itself is a good-humoured little comedy of European and native intrigue, showing how one section of the populace strove as usual to ease the white man's burden by flirtation and gossip, and the other to get the best for themselves by unlimited roguery and chicane. ”

“ First, the slow-working purple sort is verily cheap, but difficult of administration; for in water it is plainly visible and easy of discernment in tea. Whereas my patent potion, bringing love at first sight, closely resembleth the much-desired whisky. ”

“ It seems to me that we all take a great deal of interest in the miners when they strike, but not nearly enough when they hew. And yet this business of hacking large lumps of fuel out of a hole, since civilisation really depends on it, ought to be represented to us from day to day as the beautiful and thrilling thing that it really is. ”

“ Lowis has not every right to retort that he is writing comedy rather than farce; certainly he has made his four blind mice to run in highly diverting fashion, very entertaining to those of us who see how they run; and as they at least save their tails triumphantly it would perhaps be ungenerous to complain about one that doesn't. ”

“ We're English people, we are—we don't allow people to go about destroyin' our b'loons."
"No wonder they're so rich," cries the woman at the bottom of the steps in satirical tones. "That's the way to get rich, that is—destroyin' other people's prop'ty an' then refusin' to pay for it. Anybody could get rich that way." ”

“ According to an official report only fifty policemen were bitten by dogs in London last week. The falling off is said to be due to the fact that it has been rather a good year for young and tender postmen.
Some highly-strung persons, says a medical writer, are even afraid of inanimate objects. This accounts for many nervous people being afraid of venturing too near a plumber. ”

“ We're respectable people, we are, an' we work for our livin'."
"Drivin' about in a car like an express train, runnin' over other people's b'loons," corroborates her husband bitterly. "Wot country d'yer think yer in? Prussia?
By this time a small crowd has gathered on the pavement and is gazing up at the protagonists with ghoulish interest. The lady in the diamonds, a prey to mingled indignation and alarm, has leant towards her spouse and is whispering to him urgently, but he shakes her off with an impatient movement. ”

“ There's sure to be an hotel at Waterfoot, as you say. Send a telegram there, asking for lunch for six. If there's no hotel, no reply and no lunch. If there is we get our reply and our lunch. Willoughby can wire, because he learned all about telegraphs in the army. ”

“ The inventor of a flogging machine is soundly beaten by his own instrument, and he would be a sombre man indeed who could read it without a desire to witness such a chastening performance. By no means the least merit of this book is that it contains no new theories about education. ”

“ This means that everyone is trying to do less work and get more money for it, a very natural ambition which nobody can blame the miners from sharing. I suppose that if they all stopped mining and we had to depend for warmth on wrapping ourselves up in moleskins, the molliers, or whatever they are called, would strike for a two-shillings rise as well.
The worst of it is that under-production, say the economists again (there is no keeping anything from these smart lads) , sends prices up. ”

“ It seems, however, that they are not going to rest content with their present standard of altitude, but are invoking the resources of Art to render it even more conspicuous. We do not speak rashly or without book. The Evening News announced on September 8th that "Women are to be taller this autumn." Nature may be in the Fall, but women are on the rise. ”

“ Heads are to be larger this autumn, and to keep pace with the extraordinary development of brain amongst our insurgent youth, as evidenced by the correspondence in The Morning Post, it has been found necessary to make a radical change in the stock sizes of hats. ”

“ Owing to the continued over-crowding of trains, tubes and motor-buses, elbows will be more prominent and aggressive than ever, and tailors are building a type of coat calculated to relieve the strain on this useful joint by a system of progressive padding, soft inside but resembling a nutmeg-grater at the point of contact with the enemy. ”

“ Another type of coiffure is being adopted by some hairdressers, who leave the hair flat and smooth round the face, and only make a sort of bird's-nest of the ends, which stand well up so as to lengthen the profile in an upward direction. ”