Various

“ Surely the old methods of the explorer are still the best. Simply equipped with an elephant-rifle and a pith helmet, let him plunge into the bush and be lost to sight for a few years. Whereas the Missing Link may be relied on to remain resolutely beneath his rock at the sight of a sort of a Lord Mayor's Show wandering among the vegetation, the spectacle of a simple-looking traveller in the midst of the lonely forest would rather encourage the creature to emerge from its place of retreat. ”

“ CHARIVARIA.
"After all," asks a writer, "why shouldn't Ireland have a Parliament, like England?" Quite frankly we do not like this idea of retaliation while more humane methods are still unexplored.
"The miners' strike," says a music-hall journal, "has given one song-writer the idea for a ragtime song." It is only fair to say that Mr. Smillie had no idea that his innocent little manœuvre would lead to this. ”

“ Objections were still raised to making an Emergency Act permanent—it does sound rather like a contradiction in terms—but the Attorney-General skilfully countered them by pointing out that it was only the framework of the machinery, not the regulations, that would be permanent. One can imagine the bold bad baron who set up a gallows to overawe his villeins comforting objectors with the remark that after all it was merely a framework—quite useless without a rope. ”

“ To my mind we may even go so far as to hail the dawn of the golden age for old clothes; for in the fear that shabbiness may be merely a whimsical disguise or the mark of a millionaire's eccentricity the whole world (which is very imitative and very hard up) will begin to fawn upon it, and then at last many of us will enter the earthly paradise. ”

“ There seems to be something about the animal's tail that does not go with its back, or about its legs that does not go with its nose, or about its eyes that does not go with its fur. If it is fur, that is to say. And the eyes are a different colour and seem to squint a little. They say that one of them is a wall-eye. I think that is the one he watches the [pg 345] house with. Personally I consider that they are very handsome eyes in their own different lines, and my opinion is that he is a Mull-terrier; or possibly a Rum. Anyhow he is a good dog to get hold of, for he is very curly. ”

“ Let ABC be that horrible round bed where you had the geraniums last year. This year, I gather, the idea is to have it nothing but rose-trees, with a great big fellow in the middle. The question is, where is the middle? I mean, if you plant it in a hurry on your own judgment, everyone who comes near the house will point out that the bed is all cock-eye. ”

“ The trouble about old Euclid was that he had no soul, and few of his books have that emotional appeal for which we look in these days. My aim would be to bring home his discoveries to the young by clothing them with human interest; and I should at the same time demonstrate to the adult how often they might be made practically useful in everyday life. When one thinks of the times one draws a straight line at right angles to another straight line, and how seldom one does it Euclid's way ... every time one writes a T.... ”

“ There are some fifty thousand British soldiers in Ireland, costing over a million pounds a month. But Mr. Churchill took the cheery view that after all they had to be somewhere, and would cost nearly as much even in Great Britain. ”

“ Thursday, October 28th.—There being no Labour Party in the House of Lords the Emergency Powers Bill passed through all its stages in a single sitting. Even Lord Crewe did not challenge its necessity in these troublous times, but Lord Askwith was a little alarmed at the possibility that "an unreasoning Home Secretary"—as if there could ever be such a monster!—might be over-hasty to issue Orders in Council, and so exacerbate an industrial dispute. ”

“ We understand that an expedition will shortly leave the United States for Central Asia in search of the Missing Link. "Aeroplanes, motor cars, camels, mules and all means of locomotion found suitable will be used by the anthropologists, archæologists and other scientists" taking part.
We predict that an enterprise so opposed to all the traditions of exploration is doomed to failure. We cannot doubt that the Missing Link possesses a sense of smell keen enough to detect a camel or a Ford car while yet afar off. ”

“ Far from the simple withholding of his labour by a single novelist, such a turmoil would ensue as would not only shake our intellectual life to its foundations, but would keep the Prime Minister engaged in the exploration of interminable vistas of avenue. ”

“ But the gentleman who puts ease before elegance and the lady who prefers comfort to convention have got to work a little harder yet. They must not fold their hands at the moment under the impression that their labours are done. The support of hospitals is humane and only too necessary, and all honour to them for their generosity; but other spheres of action await exploration. ”

“ What with the scientists who explain things on the assumption that we know nearly as much as they do and those who explain things on the assumption that we know nothing, it is very difficult for you and me to persevere in our original determination to learn something. ”

“ The progress through the jungle of such vehicles and personnel would cause something like consternation among the larger fauna, whose limited intelligence might reasonably fail to distinguish the procession from a travelling menagerie. In these days of unrest is it right, is it expedient, thus to stir up species hatred? It would be indeed deplorable if the present quest were to be followed by a search party got up to trace the missing Missing Link expedition. ”

“ I. I do not wish to inflict pain on a good dog. What kind of a dog ought it to be?
They. Well, a mastiff.
I. Isn't that rather a smooth kind of dog? If I have to get hold of a dog, I should like one with rather a rougher surface.
They. Try an Irish terrier.
I. I have. They fight.
They. Not unless they're provoked.
I. Nobody fights unless he is provoked. But more things provoke an Irish terrier than one might imagine. ”

“ You ought to get hold of a good dog.
It is extraordinary how many things one ought to get hold of in the country. Sometimes it is a wood-chopper and sometimes a couple of hundred cabbages, and sometimes a cartload of manure, and sometimes a few good hens. ”

“ It seems rather a bright idea of C. Nina Boyle to dedicate "to Thea and Irene, whose lives have lain in sheltered ways," a seven-shilling shocker about ways that are anything but sheltered. Perhaps the sheltered in general, and Thea and Irene in particular, will take it from me that the villainies of Out of the Frying Pan are much larger than life or, at any rate, much more concentrated, and that pseudo-orphans like Maisie usually have a better chance of getting out of frying-pans into something cool than the author allows her heroine. ”

“ There is a shabby-looking man who (I read it in The Times) rings the bell of London hospitals, asks to see the secretary, presumes (as is always a safe thing to do) that the establishment is grievously in need of funds, and without any further parley hands to the startled but gratified official bank-notes to the tune of five hundred pounds. ”

“ Bills always came when the dog was away for the week-end. He was a great week-ender, and he always came back from week-ends with more and more pieces out of his ears until at last they were all gone, and he couldn't hear us when we called him.
They. Well, there are plenty of other sorts. You might have a Chow or an Airedale or a boar-hound.
I. Thank you, I do not hunt boars. Besides, all the dogs you mention are very expensive nowadays. In the War it was quite different. You could collect dogs for practically nothing then. ”

“ A coal-porter summoned for income-tax at West Ham Police Court said that his wages averaged eight hundred pounds a year. We think it only fair to say that there must be labouring men here and there who earn even less than that.
"The thief," says a weekly paper report, "entered the house by way of the front-door." We can only suppose that the burglars' entrance was locked at the time. ”

“ ECHOES OF THE COAL STRIKE.
"What's the kid shouting about? There ain't no racing."
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
"Two households, both alike in dignity...." I ask you, could the novel, of which this quotation is the text, have been written by anyone but Mr. John Galsworthy? Actually indeed the disputants belong to two branches of the same family, that grim tribe of Forsytes, whom you remember in The Man of Property, and of whose collective history the present book is a further instalment (not, I fancy, the last) . ”

“ Hilaire Belloc would embark on a resolute thirst-strike. At the same time daily newspapers would compete in offering solutions of the problem. One would say, "For goodness' sake give him the extra paltry one hundred and fifty pounds and let the country get on with its work;" ”

“ He is instructive but human; he does not take it for granted that we know what miscegenation means, but he does credit us with a little intelligence. And he realises how many arguments we have had about questions like "Why does the sea look blue?" ”

“ It is therefore the benign couple who must carry on the good work. Let them, if they really love their fellow-creatures, go to a wedding or two (having previously given a present of sufficient value to ensure respect) and display their careless garb among the guests, and then in a little while old garments would at these exacting functions become as fashionable as new and we should all be happier. ”

“ For in the course of time his son, insularly known as Willatopy, inherited the title and became twenty-eighth (no less) Baron of Topsham. Mr. Copplestone does not realise the vast difference between light comedy and broad farce, but apart from this substantial reservation I can vouch that his yarn of Madame Gilbert's Cannibal (Murray) is deftly spun. Should you decide to follow the famous Madame Gilbert when she visits the island where the twenty-eighth baron lived you will witness a lively and unusual entertainment. ”

“ They would cost a good deal more in Mesopotamia, where we have a hundred thousand troops (British and Indian) , and the cost is two and a half millions a month. Sir William Joynson-Hicks could not understand why we should spend all this money "merely to hand the country back to the rebels." Mr. Churchill said he had heard nothing about handing the country back to the rebels; from which it may be inferred either that he is not admitted into all the secrets of the Cabinet or that he draws a distinction between "rebels" and "persons who object to British rule." ”

“ Hilton will be well advised in future to choose a different type of heroine. I want to say too that I don't believe that it is either so easy or so profitable to become a well-known pianist "not in the front rank" as he seems to imagine it is. ”

“ His regrettable elusiveness is more likely to be established than overcome when he beholds mules and anthropologists, attended by aeroplanes and motor-cars, and possibly whippet-tanks, motor-scooters and phrenologists. Even if there are only nine or ten of each variety it will be enough to ensure that the adventurers miss the Link after all.
Another aspect of the expedition should be borne in mind. ”

“ Found under a bed in a strange house at Grimsby, a man told the police who arrested him that he was looking for work. It was pointed out to him that the usual place for men looking for work is in bed, not under it.
In a recent case a Hull bargee gave his name as Alfaina Swash. Nevertheless the Court did not decide to hear the rest of his evidence in camera.
A cyclist who stopped to watch a stag-hunt near Tivington Cross, in Somerset, was tossed into the hedge by the stag. On behalf of the beast it is claimed that the cyclist was off-side. ”

“ These possessive persons, with their wealth, their hatred and affections and their various strongholds in the more eminently desirable parts of residential London, affect one like portions of some monstrous stone-fronted edifice, impressive but repellent. ”

“ They had never seen so many men so willing to go for so many long walks before. They thought the Millennium had come. A proposal was made that they should be taught to form fours and march in the rear. ”

“ At the same time (this too on The Times' authority) there is an oddly and obsolescently attired lady going about who also makes London hospitals her hobby. She begins by asking the secretary if she may take off her boots, and, receiving permission, takes them off, places her feet on an adjacent chair and hands him two thousand pounds. ”

“ THE SUPERFECTION LAUNDRY.
I let myself into my flat to find a young woman sitting on one of those comfortless chairs designed by upholsterers for persons of second quality who are bidden to wait in the hall. ”