Various

“ I am much flattered by your kind invitation to discuss the Advanced Woman, but an initial difficulty suggests itself to me. Can one discuss the Advanced Woman if this Advanced Woman herself is non-existent? I am aware, of course, that she has stridden large of late in the pages of feminine fiction, but is she not as extinct (before she has ever existed) as her Dodo title? Let me make my own confession. I have used, if I did not invent, the A. W. I have secured a remunerative public. Once on a time I wrote of life as I found it. ”

“ We are in Paris, and the sight of a cuirassier trotting past with his great black crinière waving behind, or of the lady bicyclists scudding by in knickerbockers, excites us more than even the latest ravings of the newest woman in London. Buzzard be blowed! You may tell him I said so.
I want to let Mr. Conan Doyle know that there is a great opening for him here. If I may judge by the latest detective drama, the ideas of the Parisian public with regard to the acumen and general power of a detective are still very primitive. ”

“ Can it be? Yes, by Heaven, it is the great Vidocq with his faithful Coco-Latour! We breathe again, for now we know that the innocent man is safe. The procession, however, approaches. The condemned man speaks from below to his daughter in the balcony. He declares his innocence. Now good Vidocq, to the rescue. Display all your arts, convict the guilty, disguised Marquis, and save the estimable Lebrun! But Vidocq looks on impassive, a dull thud is heard and the head of the innocent rolls into the basket. Immediately afterwards Yvrier staggers in. ”

“ I should have thought that my views on the Advanced Woman were sufficiently well known; but, since you ask my opinion, I may say at once that I lose no opportunity of inveighing against this fin-de-siècle abomination. Once on a time it was not thought unbecoming for a woman to be modest and retiring. ”

“ Old Art, with its bosh about beauty, its rot about romance, its fudge about finish, its twaddle about taste, will be good enough to take a back seat. Apollo the Inspirer must give way to the sooty imp and incubus, New Scratch!—
Raphael? Ideal Beauty spoiled his Art! ”

“ The critics commended my style, and the public let me severely alone. Nous avons changé tout cela. A theatrical manager who finds his musical piece begin to drag, saves the situation by a New Edition—in other words, by two new songs and some fresh dances. In a similar way I secured a reputation by dragging in (at times by her very heel) the Advanced Woman. True that she resembles no one in actual existence, true, indeed, that she is outrageously and offensively improbable, but the public were not happy till they got her. They're happy now. So am I. ”

“ Roland has all but killed George Mazerolles in a duel, he has murdered Sabine, who, before dying, rounds on him, and he is now, by a strange conjunction of circumstances, in the very room in which he murdered Madame Mazerolles. Thither also comes everybody else. Vidocq, who is tracking Roland, discovers, through a paper belonging to the late Madame Mazerolles, that Roland, her murderer, was her son, not her step-son, and that he, Vidocq, is the father of Roland. In his youth Vidocq had been a soldier. ”

“ First of all comes Roland, the murderer, disguised in black as a wicked Marquis, and accompanied by the infamous Sabine. Hélène Lebrun, the daughter of the condemned man, also troops in to slow music in black. There is a commotion at the door, and the obsequious innkeeper backs on to the stage ushering in Milord Sir John Stilton and his son "Shames." Sir John is dressed in an enormous green swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons, a striped yellow waistcoat, a pair of yellow knickerbockers, and stockings brilliantly striped with red and black. On his head he wears a low-crowned hat. ”

“ Plon-Plon and le brav' Général, Chambord, Paris,
All chalked my walls; "devotion to the State"
Inspired their schemes predestined to miscarry,
But Bourbon, Bonapartist or what not,
Self ever seemed the centre of the plot. ”

“ Lebrun, overwhelmed by an entire absence of proofs, is tried and condemned to death. It is the morning appointed for his execution. The curtain rises in the upper floor of a restaurant commanding an extensive view of the guillotine. The sight-seers troop in. ”

“ No smile is on the lips of Erin's pale daughter. She is apparently in earnest, though both Vulcan and myself, talking it over subsequently, unite in opinion that, perhaps, she had been availing herself of this rare and unique opportunity of "getting at" the Saxon. ”

“ Love birds that sing and flowers that blow;
Try not to be a mere machine,
And let the record-squelcher go!
A little less than M'Kinley, but more than Unkind.—President Cleveland has had to allow the Gorman Act to become law without formally assenting to it. He has had, in fact, to swallow what he would fain reject, an act of involuntary political Gormandising which must be unpleasant. ”

“ Recovering himself, he is fain to escape. Vidocq, all his fatherly instincts aroused, says he shall. The weak Yvrier consents, when suddenly, from behind a curtain, appears Hélène Lebrun in black. The murderer of her father must not escape, she declares, whereupon the great detective, vowing that his son shall never be food for the guillotine, shoots him dead with a toy pistol in the region of the left waistcoat pocket. Tableau! Curtain!
There, Mr. Punch, you have the French Sherlock on the stage. A wonderful man, is he not? ”

“ Phill. Don't be so solemn, Mr. Undershell! I'm sure you can be as comical as any playactor when you choose!
Und. I really don't know how I can have given you that impression. If you expect me to treat my lyre like a horse-collar, and grin through it, I'm afraid I am unable to gratify you.
Stept. (at sea) . Capital, Sir, the professional allusion very neat. You'll come out presently, I can see, when supper's on the table. Can't expect you to rattle till you've something inside of you, can we?
Miss Stick. Reelly, Mr. Steptoe, I am surprised at such commonness from you! ”

“ Mad as a Hatter.—The Drapery World says that "the New Woman's hat" is much like the Ordinary Man's "topper," only a little smaller, and a little more cheeky. The phrase might fitly be transferred to the "New Woman" herself. She looks so much like an ordinary man, only a little smaller and a little more cheeky. ”

“ Miss Stickler (in an impressive undertone) . All I do say, Mrs. Pomfret, ma'am, is this: if that girl Louisa marches into the pew to-morrow, as she did last Sunday, before the second laundry maid—and her only under-scullery maid—such presumptiousness should be put a stop to in future!
Mrs. Pomfret (wheezily) . Depend upon it, my dear, it's her ignorance; but I shall most certainly speak about it. Girls must be taught that ranks was made to be respected, and the precedency into that pew has come down from time immemoriable, and is not to be set aside by such as her while I'm 'ousekeeper here. ”

“ Madame de Mazerolles, a wealthy widow, is, in the first Act, robbed and brutally murdered by her stepson, Roland, a dissipated young man, who is incited to the commission of the crime by his wicked mistress Sabine. Vidocq, the great representative of the new school in detection (circa A.D. 1820) , is away at the time, and in his absence the investigation falls to his rival Yvrier, who belongs to the old school. ”

“ Thus do I briefly make some record of a "trial trip"; and may no trip that any of us may make, whether involving a trial or not, have worse results than has this, of which, beginning and finishing happily and gloriously as it has done—and such be the Cannie Donia's fate evermore—I am privileged to write this slight record, and proud to account myself henceforth as
One of the Trippers.
Saxon (referring to the shillelaghs) . "It's a shame that such things as these should be permitted!"
Daughter of Erin (plaintively) . "An' what would the poor Boys use, an' they not allowed Fire-arms?" ”

“ Prognostications as to probable weather are "taken and offered" by nautically-attired guests, who, in a general way, may be supposed from their seagoing costume "to know the ropes." Here is the ever amiable and truly gallant Sir Peter Plural, looking every inch the ideal yachtsman, as honorary member of the Upper House of Cowes and Ryde Piers. Wonderful man Sir Peter! knows everybody, is liked by everybody ”

“ If markets beänt no better, but woorse—as the chap saays here—
Than they have beän in Owd England fur well-neigh two oonderd year?
Ceres.
I am not the goddess of markets!
Farmer.
Naw, naw! Thou 'rt a useless jade.
Whut use o' taturs, and turmuts and wheat, if tha ain't gut trade?
Whoy, your weather hallus cooms o' the sort as we doänt desire;
If we want sun ya send water, and if we want water 'tis fire. ”

“ However, à propos of organs, we have with us a representative of one of the greatest organs—of the Press—full of wise saws and modern instances; as jolly as a sandboy, or rather as a schoolboy out for a holiday. A sailor every inch of him, and this is saying a great deal, as he must be over six feet, and broad in proportion.
Appropriate, too, as aboard "the craft," is the presence of the Great Grand Secretary, Mr. ”