Various

“ As soon as we got in we began to make it look more like a cottage; that is to say, we accidentally dropped the aspidistra out of the window, lost the chiffonier, removed most of the obstacles and entanglements from the drawing-room to the box-room, and replaced the lace curtains with chintzes. In the same spirit of altruism we improved the bedrooms. At the end of a week we had given Mr. Perkins a cottage of which any man might be proud. ”

“ There was the pig being puzzled at the chimney-sweep's face; there was the man with his double-barrelled gun pointed straight at the chimney-sweep, and there was the chimney-sweep, with both hands up in the air, shouting "Kamerad!" as hard as he could.
Jones minimus couldn't get over it. To think that Jimmy's bloodhound had actually made up the War Loan to 15s. 6d., and caught a German spy at the same time, with nothing more to work with than a pig! Of course Jimmy knew how old Faithful had done it, but then he knew what a really prize bloodhound is capable of. ”

“ You will easily guess that a comedy (or farce) in which a woman is reduced to advertising in the Press for a husband belongs to the ante-bellum era, before the glad eye of the flapper became a permanent feature of the landscape. ”

“ Miss Irwin has now more than ever proved herself a fastidious and careful artist, with a touch of austerity that gives weight to a tale so frankly one of sentiment, and she will, I hope, continue to keep her work above the ordinary level. ”

“ Jimmy says his bloodhound did enjoy the algebra, and the way he tackled several pages of harder problems made old Jones minimus's mouth water.
Jimmy says Faithful had finished the problems and was just beginning to chew some quadratics when he looked up and there was the milkman's pig calmly standing in the garden next door, looking at him through the hedge and actually munching a piece of coal at him. ”

“ She has the confidence that avoids over-emphasis, and she does her audience the compliment of assuming that they have intelligence enough to understand the least of those little nods of hers that have the true eloquence of an under-statement. ”

“ Legion may go to church, but her real religion is concerned far more with her employers' bodies than with her own soul; and among the cardinal tenets of her faith is the necessity for dinner to be hot. ”

“ Jimmy says it takes a lot to make Jones minimus gloomy, but it turned out that he had lost the War Loan; he had either lost or mislaid it, he told Jimmy.
It was on a card, and Jones minimus only wanted another shilling to make 15s. 6d., and then in five years they gave you one pound, and it was because of the compound interest someone invented.
Jimmy says as they were talking the milkman came up and asked if they had seen his pig. The milkman is always losing his pig. Jimmy says it wanders off for a walk nearly every day talking to itself and going into gardens and relishing things. ”

“ And there one might perhaps be content to let it rest, but for the fact that Anita, the lady of the "Attraction," is worthy of a better fate. The principal man of the book, who, after much wobbling consideration, and in spite of his quite fortuitous marriage with some one else in the meantime, discovers at last that he does love Anita, is the merest peg on which to hang endless philosophisings ”

“ Neither is the writer's inner thesis—the immoralness of ordinary morality, so far as I can make out—particularly agreeable; but Anita, though far from being the sort of person one would look to meet in real life, is intriguing after a fashion, and just possibly repays the hard work needed for the making of her acquaintance.
Miss M.E.F. Irwin, whose previous books I remember to have greatly enjoyed, has produced for her third a story of much originality and power, called Out of the House (Constable) . ”

“ So, if you should only be able to snatch so much time from work of National importance as suffices to read a single tale, begin at the start, and be assured of having the best. Not that the others are without their attractions, though one is rather gratuitously revolting. ”

“ She doesn't hold with Lords poking their noses into people's kitchens, anyway. That's not her idea of how Lords ought to behave. Lords not only ought to be gentlefolk, and be fed and waited upon and live in affluent idleness, but super-gentlefolk. ”

“ It is expected that in the House of Lords Lord Spenser and Lord Harcourt will join in an impassioned plea that, until the shortage grows more acute, really well-dressed men should be allowed to compromise on stiff dickeys.
Owing to the surveyor receiving increased powers the work of conscientious objectors on the roads in East Essex has improved. Mr. Outhwaite, we hear, will ask in Parliament whether under these powers the surveyor has actually threatened to give one conscientious objector a good hard slap. ”

“ Punch has many more recipes equally cheap and excellent, and is prepared to disclose them to those of his readers who may desire to practise a rigid economy and at the same time to enjoy an abundance of good food. ”

“ She has been in service as cook or cook-housekeeper most of her life (she is now getting on in years) , and constant preoccupation with kitchen affairs has somewhat narrowed her outlook, so that the circumvention of the butcher, whose dominant idea (she believes) is to provide her with indifferent joints, is more to her than the defeat of Hindenburg ”

“ A Norfolk lady has left an annuity of seventy pounds for the support of her two favourite cats. Since the announcement of this windfall we understand that the beneficiaries have been overwhelmed with offers of marriage. ”

“ This, he considers, is a direct encouragement to the persons who seek the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, and would make Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria heir-apparent to the British Throne. The House was relieved to hear from Mr. Brace that there was no immediate danger of this contingency. Indeed, Prince Rupprecht has had so much trouble already with his prospective subjects that he has probably no desire for their closer acquaintance.
Mr. Bonar Law (to Mr. McKenna) . "As one chancellor of the exchequer to another, what do you do when you're seventy million pounds out?" ”

“ Charles Chaplin, Sir Herbert Tree is holding back his message, which reads, "That is so."
A workman at a brewery last week fell into a large vat of beer. It is given to few men thus to realise the dream of a lifetime.
All vendors of comic postcards at Llanfairfeehan, North Wales, are to be asked by the Town Council to cover them up on Sundays. ”

“ Jimmy says his bloodhound looked so disappointed when they took the algebra book from him that Jones minimus gave it him back again, as he said it was no good to him, and perhaps Faithful would find out how to catch another German spy, or else how to make up the War Loan to 15s. ”

“ It was simply to get copy for this kind of stuff that Mabel Vere (most improbably pretty in the person of Miss Gladys Cooper) advertised for a husband, for this post had already been assigned to the dullest and stuffiest of fiancés. I dare not think how the theme might have been treated in French hands, but Mr. Harcourt is very firm about the proprieties. My only fear was that the gallery might mistake his rather second-rate people for gentlefolk. In what kind of club, I wonder, do members reply to matrimonial advertisements and make bets about the result of their applications? ”

“ We understand that comic postcards may be differentiated from others by the word "Comic" plainly printed on the card.
The Daily Mail has just celebrated its twenty-first birthday, and the silence of the Poet Laureate on the matter is being adversely commented upon.
The Anarchist, Lenin, says the Swedish Dagblad, has been missing for two days. Even before that he never really seemed to make a hit.
THE BRIBE. "Who goes there?" "K—kamerad—mit souvenirs."
[pg 314]
HEREINAFTERS. I.
There are people in the world called tenants. I think nothing of them; Celia thinks nothing of them ”