Various

“ Table manners are a great trial to me in my new employ. In barracks, if you want bread, you merely shout in the queer jargon of the British soldier in India, "Hao up the roti there!" You then duck quickly, brush the crumbs out of your hair and get on with the meal. As a civilian I have to count ten, take myself firmly in hand, prepare a courteous little speech and deliver it with care and precision, trying hard to avoid glancing over my shoulder to see if a lump is likely to catch me under the ear. ”

“ Sir,—In reply to your absurdly worded letter I have lost a parrot, a grey one. I do not know why you should have inferred that the bird at your place belongs to me, unless you had already heard that mine is missing, in which case I should have thought the proper course would have been to return it.
I suppose, however, that to a person of your nature such a simple procedure would have been impossible. The writing of unnecessary, stupid and rather annoying letters seems to be an obsession with you. ”

“ The result was that all our lives—even my fifteen-shilling one—were at the disposal of the Hun. So is it to be English.
Anyhow, the saving of my own life is not, I am convinced, my forte. My forte is fatalism and trust in a star that hitherto has not been too capricious. Perhaps that is England's forte too. ”

“ When peace comes with all its horrors, you won't want to go on every day explaining to the German people how you lost the War by being too kind or by not having prepared yourself enough. And you won't want to keep telling them why you spent so much time over Verdun and why the British Fleet didn't make things as easy and comfortable for you as you reckoned it ought to have done. The German people won't want to listen to talk of that kind. ”

“ Martin Harvey has evidently approached this high matter of the Shakspeare Tercentenary celebration with the sincerity and thoughtfulness which have so often laid us under debt to him. He makes you feel that his heart is more with his "darling" author than with any other lesser man. It is only an implacable public that has attached him so persistently to the steps of a guillotine against a blood-red sky. ”

“ Then, there can be living pictures of yourself, in all kinds of uniforms, deciding reluctantly to issue an ultimatum, or packing your valise for the Front, or leading two millions of men in a charge and bringing back four millions of prisoners or setting an example to your people by eating War-bread by the crumb. And then you can wind up the evening's entertainment by showing yourself making a speech in which you bring in that bit about the good old German God who has always been your ally. ”

“ The way he used to write his articles was very characteristic of the man. I have seen him lying flat on his face in a tiny dug-out no bigger or higher than the underneath of a small dinner-table, in the front line trench, dashing off the first half of one of his quaint articles to Punch. He would have to stop in the middle and crawl out on patrol up to the German wire, have a scrap out there with a Bosch patrol at a few yards' range, stay out for two or three hours, and crawl back, soaked to the skin and covered with mud, to finish his article in time for the post. ”

“ Vachell's longest novel is in many ways his best yet. There are obviously personal touches in his pictures of Californian life; and he seems equally at home in dealing with every phase of his hero's chameleon career. The other characters also are well drawn, notably Ivy, the unrepentant little wanton through whom came Tim's first lapse in the colour scale. And the end, which restores him to England, home and unexpected fatherhood (unexpected, that is, to those whom familiarity with Mr. Vachell's methods had not kept on the watch for precisely this development) , is both sincere and moving. ”

“ After long deliberation and taking into consideration the circumstance that the vest which was priced at fifty shillings had to be inflated before it was of any use and that the arrival of a torpedo would probably deprive me of all breath, or at any rate, of all blowing power, I decided that two pounds ten was excessive. No life could be worth that. ”

“ But even office life has its compensations. There are moments of pure delight, such as that in which I discovered "Cemeteries" classified under the general heading of "Accommodation for Troops."
And the Babu is always with us to make our days joyful. Babu English is perhaps rather vieux jeu at this time of day; nevertheless it is a privilege to read on the spot a supplication for permission to "prostitute myself daily to your holy feet this time without fail whereby to beseech to Heaven to send to your Honour many posthumous olive branches" ”

“ They've been there and they'll know all about it without being told. No, what you'll want to do will be to get into a new atmosphere, with people all round you listening to you just as if you were the only man in the world. ”

“ So little emphasis was laid on this that one quite naturally expected something rather like a vest. Not of course such an article as that historic waistcoat which Dickens borrowed from Macready, but a vest not devoid of vestiness—something that a gentleman could negligently pace the deck in, without being too ostentatiously engaged in the task or pastime of saving his life; or sleep in with comfort, all ready for the water when the Hun arrived. ”

“ In conversation, excellent fellow as he usually is, the Babu is easily misunderstood. It was only yesterday that one of them was giving me an account of an old Sikh monk he had come upon during a walk in the woods. I had not known before that there were monks among the Sikhs, but then there are quite a number of facts about India that I have yet to learn. ”

“ Dear Fred,—I am sorry you should be so upset by the loss of a bird that must have been a cause of considerable embarrassment to you at times, that is if the bird which at present conducts our ménage is yours.
If you would only provide me with a list of the phrases most favoured by your parrot I should be able to come to a definite conclusion on the point of ownership. In a general way the bird here tallies with your description. ”

“ H. A. Vachell is to be congratulated upon having evolved in The Triumph of Tim (Smith, Elder) one idea that is as ingenious as it is novel. Tim, who had no legal right to any particular name, started life as a blameless schoolboy under the designation of Tim White. Subsequent events having necessitated his retirement to the New World, he began again there as Tim Green, and so on, through a period of prosperity as Brown, one of adversity as Black, into the tranquil conclusion of Grey. ”

“ Having no particular reason for losing my life, at any rate without a struggle—provided always that the operation was not too expensive—I gave more attention to these advertisements than to any others since at school, too long ago, the entrancing and persuasive firm of Theobald spread his lures before us; and having done so I obediently obeyed their instructions and wrote for illustrated pamphlets. [Does anyone, I wonder by the way, collect illustrated pamphlets? The illustrated pamphlets of this War alone should make a valuable exhibit some day.] ”

“ So simple and successful has been the progress of the Daylight-Saving Scheme, under which the clock is to be put forward an hour during the summer months, that a movement is on foot to help the War Office prophets by putting the War back a couple of years. ”

“ Dillon had forgotten some of the elementary rules of justice, brought the debate back to the level of common sense by contrasting the small number of executions with the heavy toll of military and civilian life that the rebels had taken. Repeating his coup of two years ago, when he went to the War Office after the Curragh incident, he now announced his immediate intention to go to Ireland, in the hope of discovering some arrangement for the future which would commend itself to all parties. ”

“ Old Lady (to grandson just home on leave from the trenches) .
"I am glad you've come. You're just in time to kill the pig."
Josiah, head of the family whose name, Chapel, Mr. Miles Lewis has given to his South Wales story (Heinemann) , realised quite suddenly in middle life that if he was ever to restore the fortunes of his house, then unhappily depressed, he must wake up and stir about a bit; must in fact seize fate and the world by the throat and demand his own. ”

“ Eagerly expecting the death of a rotten brother and the pouching of a fat inheritance, he so allows this to prey on his mind that, when the great chance comes of an important cutting-out expedition of the kind for which he, keenest and most resourceful of soldiers and adored leader of his fearless Hausas, is widely famous, his nerve just goes to little bits. ”

“ For a long time signs have not been absent that the star of the mere hustler is set, and that the public are no longer to be cowed into obedience by the Prussianism of Blank, who commands, "Buy my soap and step lively about it. ”

“ I suppose there are men who think it so desperately important to succeed to money they haven't earned that they go off their feed and throw aside habits of courage long fortified by rigorous self-discipline ”

“ As the day when I go 'ome to 'Enry Street!
"I can only add that neither total prohibition nor no prohibition will have any more effect on the course and conclusion of this war than Mrs. Malaprop's besom had on the Atlantic Ocean."—Letter in a Provincial Paper.
Mrs. M. should have called in the assistance of Mrs. Partington.
"It should be as widely known as possible that if people found a baby when there was the slightest possibility of a person being still alive, it was their duty to cut it down if hanging, or take it out of the water, if it was a case of drowning."—Provincial Paper. ”

“ Each, as I say, was the best; and, however different in material, all were alike too in one effect, for each in saving one's life saved it the right way up. There are, it seems, buoyant belts, or vest, so lost to shame as to submerge the wearer's head and shoulders and leave only his legs exposed. But not so with these; these had no such tricks; these undertook to maintain me topside up with care. The pictures in the pamphlets were invariably of gentlemen of vaster proportions even than myself, all riding buoyantly and securely on the waves, like Dr. ”

“ It shows a considerable virtue in him to have adopted, without straining after a perversely original and disquieting effect, the very sensible simplifications of our modernist school. To play substantially the whole of Hamlet in under three and a-half hours is a highly creditable feat of stage direction. ”

“ Joe, of Camberwell and very humble origin, has social ambitions and some natural aptitude for fulfilling them. He is an intriguing study, though I cannot believe in him as firmly as I can in his vulgar relations. That he may arrive at the point where the snares of wealth are to encompass him round about he is allowed to win a prize in the Calcutta Sweep, and then to have a successful flutter in options. In this way he wins his complete emancipation from Camberwell. The process is so absurdly easy that one imagines Mr. ”

“ O'Brien against the executions in Ireland it was not, perhaps, a fortunate moment for Sir John Lonsdale to suggest that the Military Service Bill should be extended to Ireland. Mr. Asquith was sympathetic in principle to the idea, but made it plain that in practice it was impossible, since Mr. Redmond was opposed to it. Sir Edward Carson thought the fact deplorable while recognising its cogency; but he suggested that if the Nationalist leader was the indirect Governor of Ireland he should be given the responsibility instead of exercising it second-hand. Mr. ”

“ In the Commons the Nationalist factions were noisily assailing the Prime Minister with protests against the executions of the rebel leaders, and ultimately succeeded in inducing him to give them a day for what must in the circumstances be a premature discussion.
Then our Russian friends went to the Lords, where they found a discussion on Ireland actually in progress. It was started by Lord Loreburn, who accused the Government of having neglected the elementary duty of protecting the law-abiding population, and urged upon them collectively the necessity of being as candid as Mr. ”