Various

“ Of all the young bachelors in his tribe not one was more highly esteemed than Ug, the son of Zug. He was one of the nicest young prehistoric men that ever sprang seven feet into the air to avoid the impulsive bite of a sabre-tooth tiger, or cheered the hearts of grave elders searching for inter-tribal talent by his lightning sprints in front of excitable mammoths. Everybody liked Ug, and it was a matter of surprise to his friends that he had never married. ”

“ I said with enthusiasm. "A paper-chase is the best fun in the world. I'll see you start and give you a cheer."
"You can't do that," said Helen firmly, "because we've settled that you're to carry the bag and be the hare."
"Come, come," I said, "this is an unworthy proposal. Would you chase your more than middle-aged father over the open country? Never. How could he look the village in the face if he were to be seen scattering little bits of paper from a linen bag? He would fall in their estimation and would drag you all with him in his fall. ”

“ But the refined and sensitive nature of Ug, the son of Zug, shrank from this brusque form of wooing. He was shy with women. To him there was something a little coarse, almost ungentlemanly, in the orthodox form of proposal; and he had made up his mind that, if ever he should happen to fall in love, he would propose by ideograph. ”

“ There was always one lady supremely longer-necked, more wistful or more simpering than the others. But in this new Book of Beauty one turns the pages only to be more perplexed. The embarrassment of riches is too embarrassing. I have been through the work a score of times and am still wondering on whom my affections and admiration are most firmly fixed.
This new Book of Beauty has a very different title from the old ones. It is called The Pekingese, and is the revised edition for 1914.
How to play the part of Paris where all the competitors have some irresistibility, as all have of either sex! ”

“ I daresay they fancy themselves as runners on the strength of their remembered boyish feats and of certain more recent runs when they have lingered too long over breakfast and have had to catch a train. I warn them not to build a paper-chase on so slender a foundation. A jog-trot seems the easiest thing in the world, but after two hundred yards the temptation to lapse into a walk becomes irresistible. I will dwell no further on my own experiences, but transfer myself in imagination to the hounds who were chasing me. ”

“ Several hours later a neighbour called at the cottage and discovered the three corpses in one sad heap: Vera Alexandrina Polianowski, shot through the breast; at her side, Vladimir Crackovitch, with a bullet in each eye; and, still clutching his revolver, Vladimir, the sailor, seated upon his grim cushion of the dead, his back supported against the wall under the domestic lamplit icon, with a smile of hellish satisfaction frozen upon his lips and the remaining three bullets buried in his heart. ”

“ He was taking hounds to kennel, all alone, he used to say,
And the hills of Connemara, when the night is falling dirty,
Is an ill place to be left in when the dusk is turning grey,
An ill place to be lost in most at any time o' day.
"Adown the dismal mountains that night it blew tremendous,
A-sobbing like a giant and a-snorting like a whale,
When he saw beside the sheep-track ('Holy Saints,' says he, 'defend us!')
A mighty dainty lady, dressed in green, and sweet and pale,
And she rode an all-cream pony with an Arab head and tail. ”

“ Ug, the son of Zug, had to sit up night after night till he had carved three trees, a plesiosaurus, four kinds of fish, a star-shaped rock, eleven [pg 7] different varieties of flowering shrub, and a more or less lifelike representation of a mammoth surprised while bathing. It is little wonder that the youth of the period, ever impetuous, looked askance at this method of revealing their passion, and preferred to give proof of their sincerity and fervour by waiting for the lady of their affections behind a rock and stunning her with a club. ”

“ Henry Harding who at the last solved all the difficulties of Rose Hilton by the simple expedient of a romantic proposal is a hollow fraud. The position was this: Rose was a woman of flesh and blood and all the human limitations, blessed and cursed with all the intricacies allotted by Providence to the sex. Her trouble was that she had to face life as it is, and this she found very trying. She suffered from her marriage to a man old enough to be her grandfather, and from her abortive grapplings both with the abstract problems of her soul and the concrete mischiefs of her female friends. ”

“ And—was it luck entirely, Sir, I killed my fox to-night?"
THE LITTLE WONDER.
The crowd had gone, the lights had been extinguished, and the doors of the music-hall were shut. The Little Wonder was tired after the performance; his attempt to do the double somersault had strained him, and his failure had brought a whipping. Although the outhouse in which he was to lie was cold and damp and smelt horribly, he was glad when his master thrust him into it, and he was content to lie down in the straw and forget his misery in sleep. ”

“ I found the whole family, with the addition of a little boyfriend, gathered together in a very purposeful and alarming way in the library There was about them an undefinable air of the chase, for they were all well-booted and belted, and Peggy had a large clasp-knife dangling at her waist. "It is for the hare," she said, "when we catch him."
"The hare?" I said. "What hare?"
"You," said the lady of the house cheerfully, "are to be the hare. You are to run till you are cooked, and then you will be caught."
"What madness is this?" I said.
"It's not madness a bit," said Helen indignantly. ”

“ Every now and then there is an article in the papers asking and answering the question, What is the greatest benefit that has come to mankind in the past half century? The answer is usually the Marconi system, or the cinema, or the pianola, or the turbine, or the Röntgen rays, or the telephone or the motor car. Always something utilitarian or scientific. But why should we not say that it was the introduction of Pekingese into England from China? ”

“ It is perhaps a mistake to read a novel at a sitting, since the reaction is too sudden and the reader is apt to find the real life and the real people surrounding him highly unsatisfactory by contrast. ”

“ It should be understood that in those days only the most powerful motive, such as a whole-hearted love, could drive a man to writing poetry; for it was not the ridiculously simple task which it is to-day. The alphabet had not yet been invented, and the only method by which a young man could express himself was by carving or writing on stone a series of pictures, each of which conveyed the sense of some word or phrase. ”

“ The influence of IBSEN and a militant Suffragette didn't help her meditations, and when her husband died she had the mortification to find that the first man of her own age who professed love to her was no man but a series of artistic poses. Of her difficulties, real enough up to this point, the solution was the fraudulent Henry, fraudulent because he was just a stage hero whose actions and conversation resembled nothing on earth. Henry, in fact, is the sort of person that doesn't exist, and, if he did, would be intolerable to everybody except a novel reader worked up to a climax. ”

“ Such ladies as are here are here for their beauty alone and are beyond or below price. Their favours are not to be bought. Among them I note with especial joy Yiptse of Chinatown, Mandarin Marvel, who "inherits the beautiful front of her sire, Broadoak Beetle" ”

“ DUGMORE has imparted the affection that be himself entertains for his chosen beast. Although he shoots with no more formidable a weapon than a camera, the dangers and risks that he has run would appal many of the sportsmen whose aim is to destroy and not to study the lives of animals. He has, however, no contempt for hunters, provided that they will play the game and give a fair chance to their quarry. Another point in his favour, which appeals mightily to me, is that after nine consecutive seasons in Newfoundland he confesses that his knowledge of the caribou is still incomplete. ”

“ The Hobby Rider (Mr. CHERRY) takes the temperature of The Poor Little Rich Girl (Miss STEPHANIE BELL) .
The hound is Mr. ERNEST HENDRIE (The Man who makes Faces) , well-known as The Dog in The Blue Bird.
Her "Poor Little Rich Girl" is poor because her parents are too rich. Her father is too busy with finance and her mother with social climbing to spare time for their daughter's company, so they leave her to the care of governesses and menials. Her nurse, anxious for an evening out at a picture-palace, gives the child an overdose of sleeping-mixture, with the result that she nearly dies of it. ”

“ The steel engravers have long since all died of starvation; and here are photographs only, but there are many more of them, and (strange innovation!) there are more gentlemen than ladies. For this preponderance there is a good commercial reason, as any student of the work will quickly discover, for we are now entering a sphere of life where the beauty of the sterner sex (if so severe a word can be applied to such sublimation of everything that is soft and voluptuous and endearing) is more considered than that of the other. ”

“ Rosie, who is a reader of books, afterwards said that no sleuth-hounds could have done the thing better. So by paths and ploughed fields and over gates and stiles the dreadful chase continued until there came another check. "These," said Helen, pointing to some pieces of paper, "are not newspaper. They are bits of letters." It was too true. The Timeses and The Daily Newses had given out, and the hare, omitting nothing that might lead to his destruction, had torn up all his available correspondence. It threw the pack out for a few minutes, but they rallied. ”

“ The ladies, as I have said, are in the minority, for obvious reasons, for these little disdainful distinguished gentlemen figure here as potential fathers, with their fees somewhat indelicately named; for there's a husbandry on earth as well as in heaven. ”

“ It's no good, Frépeau. Unless you let me off, you're done.
Frépeau (getting up) . Well, I suppose I must. But personally I'd be ashamed to escape through such a rotten coincidence as that. (Making for the door.) I'll just go and arrange it. Er, I suppose this is the end?
Sir GEORGES. The end? Good Heavens, man, I've got my big scene to come. I have to explain why Mérital stole the money thirty years ago!
HOLMAN CLARK (eagerly) . Let me guess. His wife was starv—
SIR GEORGES. No, no, don't spoil it. (Sternly) It's a very serious thing, HOLMAN, to spoil an actor-manager's big scene. ”

“ Unfortunately I have no friends just now, except what I want to keep. While I was thus at a loss, Charles came to stay for a few days three doors off. He lives a long way away and would have time to forget before I saw him again. So on the day before his departure I bearded him like a man.
"Charles," I began, "you are fabulously rich. Your income comes in at such a pace that you hardly ever know within five shillings how much you have at the bank." ”

“ ROOSEVELT may be, the fact remains that he has been a cowboy, a police commissioner of New York, a soldier on active service, and the President of God's Country, suh; and a man must have an unusually negative personality if he cannot make entertainment for us out of that. ”

“ Then, as the curtain fell, he retired with many bows—and in the wings gave the Marvel a hot time for shirking the biscuit trick.
I question whether the Little Wonder in real life would have so ill-treated any creature; but things are different in dreams ”

“ Mérital (sternly) . Now then, Frépeau! I must ask you to give instructions that the libel is withdrawn in court this afternoon. If not—
Frépeau. Well?
Mérital (softly) . I know somebody else who stole something from the stamp drawer thirty years ago. (Frépeau's whiskers tremble.) Aha, I thought I'd move you this time.
Frépeau. It's a lie! How did you find out?
Mérital (blandly) . I said to myself, "I am the hero of this play and I've got to get out of this mess somehow. If I could only find some papers incriminating the villain—that's you all would be well." So I—er—found them.... ”

“ MARY WILLIAMS, medical inspector of schools under the Worcestershire County Council, has discovered, as a result of investigations, that there is a higher proportion of nervous, excitable children among the red-haired ones than among the others. We have ourselves known more than one such lad lose all self-control merely upon being addressed as "Carrots." ”

“ ROOSEVELT had resigned the Presidency of China for that of Mexico, and the new President sold the Chulalongkorn back to Great Britain. Of course by that time she was quite obsolete, so they called her the Indefensible, and put a nucleus crew on board for a few months. Then when Mr. LLOYD GEORGE became Prime Minister, they offered her to Canada as a gift; but the Canadians didn't like her name. ”

“ With these are mixed the familiar figures of her waking life, all of them exposed in their true characters so that you can distinguish the devotion of the doctor (who now appears in pink because he likes riding hobbies) and the affection of the teddy-bear (now expanded to human proportions) from the serpentine nature of the governess and the double-faced dealings of the nurse. Her father, who is a stranger to her, comes on dressed in banknotes and chained to a safe; her mother, also a stranger, wears a society bee which buzzes in the place where her bonnet would have been ”