Various

“ As tailor his chief customer, as soldier his contemptuous scandalised critic, is Sir Dennys Broughton, whose wayward flapper daughter Betty is in the early fierce stages of revolt against the stuffiness of life at Grange Court, meets Smith over some boys' club work, and, finding brains and dreams in him (a formidable contrast to her loafing brother) , falls into passionate first-love. ”

“ Freddy apologised for them; they were getting a bit above themselves, he was afraid, but they were seldom dangerous, seldom attacked one unprovoked. "Live and let live" was their motto. For all that they did get a trifle de trop sometimes; he himself had lost his temper when he awoke one morning to find a brawny rat sitting on his face combing his whiskers in mistake for his own (a pardonable error in the dark) ; and, determining to teach them a lesson, had bethought him of his old friend, the noble fert. ”

“ Mr. C.M. LOWNE was a very passable beau, and made love to Remnant with that rich fruitiness of voice of which he is a past master. It was her business (as she explained to Tony when he surprised their two faces within kissing distance of each other) to keep Jules in good humour since Tony's chances depended upon his patronage. But it couldn't have helped much to tell Jules with such appalling candour that the shiver produced by his kiss was the same kind as she had once felt when a rat ran over her face during sleep. ”

“ Not only did my new acquaintance know all these people, their capabilities and the lowest salary that could be offered to them with any chance of acceptance, but he was also, it seemed, beloved by them all. Between agent and client never in the history of the world had such charming relations subsisted as between every pro. on his books and himself.
It was then that Ella Reeve came in. ”

“ I learned, for example, that Ugly Sisters are at Christmas-time always Ugly Sisters, and very often use again the same dialogue, merely transferring themselves from, say, Glasgow to Wigan, or from Bristol to Dublin; and this will be their destiny until they become such very old men that not even the kindly British public will stand it any longer. England, it seems, is full of performers who, touring the halls from March to December, are then claimed for panto as her own, arriving a little before Christmas not less regularly than the turkey ”

“ Smith is just as badly if more soberly hit, and recognising the impossibility of the situation (quite apart from demonstrations by the alarmed Broughtons) decides to take his tape and shears to his London house of business. The date of all this being about the time of the misguided Panther's fateful leap on Agadir.
Act II. brings us to the second year of the War. Young Broughton, puppy no longer, is gloriously in it, and has just been gazetted to a Territorial regiment whose Colonel bears the not uncommon name of Smith. Our tailor, of course, and a rattling fine soldier too. ”

“ TULLY (always, I find, quite admirable in characterisation, and that no mere matter of outward trick, but duly charged with feeling) made just such a decent, lovable, sideless officer as it has been the pride of the nation of shopkeepers to produce in the day of challenge. Whoever was it dared cast Mr. MCKINNEL for the part of a weak kindly old ass of a baronet, without any ruggedness or violence in his composition? Congratulations to the unknown perspicacious hero and to Mr. MCKINNEL! Miss MADGE TITHERADGE flapped prettily as a flapper; bit cleanly and cruelly in her biting mood ”

“ Lady Broughton, least malleable of the group, is frankly appalled by this new mésalliance. Perhaps Mr. TERRY'S version of blue-blooded insolence and fatuity is for his stage purpose rather crudely coloured, but who shall say [pg 187] that the doctrine that a man in khaki who has been an elementary schoolmaster or a tailor is a man for a' that, is quite universally accepted in the best circles even in this year of grace? Betty, now a grown girl in the cynical stage, revenges herself with feline savagery on the knight of the shears for the imagined slight of his defection. ”

“ ELLA REEVE.
One can't be too careful how one boasts, especially if there is the chance of the boast being put quickly to the proof. In fact, it is better perhaps not to boast at all.
I was sitting with a friend and a stranger in a London restaurant, having joined their table for coffee. The stranger, on introduction, turned out to be connected with the stage in some capacity as agent, and among his regular clients were the managers of various big provincial theatres, for whom he provided the leading lights of pantomime, or, as he would call it, panto. ”

“ In order to meet the national need for economy in the consumption of paper, the Proprietors of Punch are compelled to reduce the number of its pages, but propose that the amount of matter published in Punch shall by condensation and compression be maintained and even, it is hoped, increased. ”

“ I am fond of animals, but I do not like having to share my tea with a bald-headed rodent who gets noisy in his cups, or having a brace of high-spirited youngsters wrestle out the championship of the district on my bread-and-butter. ”

“ On these matters, as on all others covered by this volume, we are told nothing that is not invigorating and to the point, and the tributes here paid to the fighting qualities of our armies of to-day form a fitting conclusion to a book that is full of sound sense and good cheer. Sir EVELYN has had a vast experience and enjoys an evergreen vigour. What is rarer still, he has a kindly nature that admits no trace of the disappointments he must from time to time have suffered. ”

“ A few stalwarts from Lancashire insisted none the less on taking a division, and were joined on general principles by the Nationalists and other habitual malcontents. But India, the Government and Mr. ASQUITH had the comfortable majority of 140.
Thursday, March 15th.—Under the present rules of procedure (the products of Irish obstruction in the past) the Nationalists find it difficult to put their declaration of war against the Government to much effect. Their best chance comes during the first hour of the sitting, and their most useful weapon is the Supplementary Question. ”

“ He's quite capable, if he doesn't like a dish, of throwing it at the attendants. Then he gets so angry when people don't agree with him; the least contradiction makes him purple, absolutely purple, with passion. ”

“ You know they've had to keep him away from the fighting, both in France and Russia, because he would insist on giving the most absurd orders, and when things didn't go right immediately he always broke out into shouting and cursing, and praying and crying until his Staff felt so ashamed of him and themselves that they didn't know which way to look. There's never any knowing what a man like that will do. ”

“ The deserters were found a week later; they had wormed through a system of rat-holes into the next dug-out, inhabited by the Atkinses, and had remained there, honoured guests.
It is the nature of the British Atkins to make a pet of anything, from a toad to a sucking pig—he cannot help it. The story about St. George, doyen of British soldiers, killing that dragon—nonsense! He would have spanked it, may be, until it promised to reform, then given it a cigarette, and taken it home to amuse the children. To return to our ferrets, Burroughs and Welcome provided no exception to the rule ”

“ Like the true soldier that he is, he seems to have no time or taste for those recriminations which are best left to small political fry. And I rejoice that in a book of such authority the note is largely one of happiness and hope.
"Owing to congestion on the railways there is a food shortage in Petrograd, which has led some of the less irresponsible citizens to demonstrate during the session of the Council of the Empire and the Duma."—Daily Sketch. ”

“ The Proprietors believe that the public will prefer an increase of price to a reduction of matter.
Readers are urged to place an order with their Newsagent for the regular delivery of copies, as Punch may otherwise be unobtainable, the shortage of paper making imperative the withdrawal from Newsagents of the "on-sale-or-return" privilege. ”

“ Do by all means. No—stop; you haven't given me any of the War news. I keep on asking for it, but nobody pays any attention to my requests. Honestly, I don't see much use in being a Sultan if one can't get anyone to do what one asks.
Enver. Oh, you want to hear some War news, do you? Well, I may as well tell you now as later. Baghdad's gone. ”

“ WILSON'S call there have always been found some eager to give their services and, if need be, life itself to prove their love for the other great Republic. I don't think either you or I will grudge such an affection at this date, founded historically though it may be on a mutual dislike of ourselves, and consequently it is a very pleasant impression that is produced by this record of American efficiency and courage in Red Cross work on the French front. ”

“ Kensington Council states that 300,000 tons of food are consumed annually by thousands of dogs which serve no useful purpose. The dogs, on the other hand, are asking what would become of the nation's womanhood if there were no dogs to take it out for exercise in the afternoon. ”

“ Having discovered this latter fact and also formed a remarkably cordial relationship apparently in a single day, the enthusiastic cub subaltern (distemper and snobbishness over and done with) motors up his C.O., who is visiting his brother and partner, and brings him in to Grange Court on the way. Sir Dennys, now a brassarded private and otherwise a converted man, is still confoundedly embarrassed, and stands anything but easy in the presence of his youngster's Colonel. ”

“ The KAISER is in a bit of a hole. Attending a special service for the success of the War, he is reported to have "sung the De Profundis at the top of his voice." All the rest of him, including the lower part of his voice, seems to have been submerged.
The revolutionary spirit in Germany seems to have extended to the vegetable kingdom. ”

“ The new order prohibiting newspapers from printing contents bills is bearing hardly in certain quarters, and it is rumoured that at least one sensational contemporary has offered to forgo publishing itself in return for the privilege of selling its posters. ”

“ Wherever he goes he turns everything upside down, and there's not a moment's peace or repose for anybody. He must have reviews of troops morning, noon and night, and it's all quite useless, for our Generals tell me that he doesn't really understand anything about soldiers and their movements. ”

“ It is decently in key, and an exceptionally clever cast carried it adroitly over any rough places. Remarkable, too, as almost the first popular testimonial since the War began to the too-much-taken-for-granted Territorials, who worked in the old days while we scoffed and golfed. That's all to the good.
THE TAILOR WHO DID NOT NEED TO PRESS HIS SUIT.
Sir Dennys Broughton ... MR. NORMAN MCKINNEL.
Lady Broughton ... MISS LILIAN BRAITHWAITE.
Edward Smith (tailor) ... MR. GEORGE TULLY.
Our author's hero is an excellent provincial tailor, who is also keen Captain Smith in the Sheffingham Terriers. ”

“ EADIE as her lover Tony; for, though he got a fine flash out of the green eye of jealousy when he suspected his patron, Jules, of jumping his love-claim, it was obvious at the end that the success of his professional ambitions was far more to him than any affair of the heart. And, after all, when Remnant complained of a curious bourdonnement in her ears, and Tony had to reply solemnly, "That which you hear is the beating of your heart to the music of your soul," you could hardly expect a man with Mr. ”