Various

“ It made one's heart bleed to read it, such halting appeal, such inarticulate sentiment. "Le pauvre garçon!" cried Georgette, "his passion is so strong he cannot find words for it. He is stricken dumb with excess of feeling. I must be at his side to comfort him." And she has flown like the wind to Calais, that she may be affianced to him. But if M'sieur desires to buy the soap I know the kind you prefer.'
"So you see me," concluded Ronnie plaintively, "bankrupt in love and money. ”

“ But Lallie couldn't see the dif between a man and a novelist, and Algy couldn't write his best seller without studying its heroine, and so—and so—at last our poor prize couple are in that long list that an overworked judge complained of the other day. And if you ask for the moral I suppose it's "Don't try to study character where there isn't any."
This is emphatically a season for arms, my Daphne, which seems quite a good little idea for peace-time! Faces and figures don't count; it's the arm, the whole arm and nothing but the arm! ”

“ The unexampled rapidity with which, owing to the opportunities of war-time, men in all walks of life have reached the top of the tree in early manhood is leading on to strange but inevitable results. Unable to rise any higher they are already contemplating the heroic course of justifying their eminence by starting afresh at the bottom of the ladder.
The crucial and classical example is, of course, furnished by our Boy Chancellor. ”

“ Can it have dawned at last upon his parent that this is one of those little games where the odds are a trifle too heavy in favour of the Table? Or can the son have sickened of his own villainy and washed his claws of his shady confederate? I don't know why, but I am almost beginning to hope.... No; through the open window comes the well-known cry, "There it is, Fa-ther! There it is, Fa-ther! Be a bird! Be a bird!... ”

“ The amount of grains or grubs or whatever the stakes may be (and it is not likely that any rook would play for love) , that that old idiot must have lost even since I have been here, is beyond all calculation. He has never once been allowed to spot the right thimble, but he will go on. As to the son's motive in permitting it, any bird of the world would tell you that, if you possess a senile parent who is bound to be rooked by somebody, it had better be by a person with whom you can come to a previous arrangement. ”

“ As a practised novelist, with a touch so sure that it can hardly fail to adorn, he has made a tale that is interesting throughout and here and there aspires to real beauty of feeling; though not all the writer's skill can disguise a certain want of unity in the natural and supernatural divisions of his theme. The early part of the book, which tells of the boyhood of Archie and the attempts of his dead brother Martin to "get through" to him, are admirably done. ”

“ Figure the disgust of five adventurers who, landing at the Murman base, sternly braced to encounter the last extremity of peril and of hardship, to sleep in the snow and dig one another out o' mornings, to give the weakest of their number the warmest icicle to suck, the longest candle to chew—found themselves billeted in a room which the landladies of home would delight to advertise! ”

“ Of course several fish-bones flew down his throat, and while he was choking he did such fearful and wonderful things that the whole room, not dreaming the poor dear was at his dernier soupir, broke out clapping and shouting and then imitated him, and by the time Chippy felt better he found himself famous and everybody doing the Peace Leap, which has completely cut out the Jazz-stagger, the Wolf's Prowl and everything else.
Oh, my dearest, who do you think are among the crowd of married people who're going to celebrate peace by dissolving partnership? The Algy Mallowdenes! ”

“ If the whole of the income-tax could be paid by one individual the cost of collection would be nil. One imagined the CHANCELLOR on the eve of the Budget wishing, à la NERO, that the whole of the British people had but one purse, into which he could dip as deeply and as often as he pleased.
The debate on the Finance Bill was largely devoted to the proposed "levy on capital," which a section of the "Wee Frees," who already display fissiparous tendencies, have borrowed from the Labourites. ”

“ After which he exhorts him—this time in plain English—to "be a bird." Whereupon the doting old parent decides that he will be a bird and back the middle thimble, and the next moment I hear the son exclaim, evidently referring to the rook, "No, 'e's got it; no, 'e's got it. Cheer up! Cheer up!" with a perfunctory concern that is but a poor disguise for indecent exultation. I am not suggesting, by the way, that birds are in the habit of dropping their "h's"—but this one does. There are times when he is so elated by his parent's defeat that he cannot repress an outburst of inarticulate devilry. ”

“ Life with a big L, my dear. Every kind of world while you wait, the upper, the under, and the half. Lallie was very glad of the money that came rolling in, but I believe she said wistfully, "How does my gentle quiet Algy know so much about this, that and the other?" And her gentle quiet Algy made answer: "Intuition, dear; imagination; the novelist's temperament."
By-and-by, however, she began to hear of his being seen at the Umpty Club and Gaston's, chatting with Pearl Preston (one of those people, you know, Daphne, who're immensely talked about but never mentioned) . ”

“ Talking of dances, one's getting a bit dégoûtée of Jazz bands and steps. When ces autres get hold of anything it always begins to leave off being amusing. There's really a new step, however, the Peace Leap, that hasn't yet been quite usé and spoilt by the outlying tribes. The origin of it was a little funny. Chippy Havilland was at one of Kickshaw's Jazz dinners one night, where people fly out of their seats to one-step and two-step between the courses and during the courses and all the time. ”

“ And then a "certain liveliness" set in at the official residence of the Permanent Irremovable Assistant Under-Secretary.
"You silly little goosey!" said Algy; "don't you see that it's not as a man who admires her but as a novelist who's studying her that I talk to Pearl Preston? She's my next heroine. A heroine like that is a sine quâ non in a novel of the Modernist school." ”

“ People have their own ideas of how they mean to celebrate it, and when they find that other people have the same ideas and mean to do the same things at the same time there are alarums and excursions, and things are said, and quite several people who were dear friends during the War don't speak now owing to the peace! ”

“ For example, if a subaltern glissading on ski down the village street, maintaining his precarious balance by the aid of a "stick" in each hand, meets a General, also on ski and also a novice, what should happen? What does happen we know by demonstration: the subaltern brandishes both sticks round his head, slides forward five yards, smartly crosses the points of his ski and then, plunging forward, buries his head in the wayside drift, while the General Officer sits down and says what he thinks. ”

“ The resumed debate on the Finance Bill was enlivened by some personal details. By way of showing that even without a levy on capital the rich man bears his share of the burdens of the State, Sir EDWARD CARSON remarked that, when he receives a retainer, he immediately allows for the super-tax and enters it in his fee-book at only half the amount. ”

“ Thanks to our serviceable and becoming Arctic kit and the steady approach of the Spring thaw, heralded by the preparation of spare bridges to replace the existing ones, we can defy the eccentricities of the climate. ”

“ Again, I feel that there is needed a clearer motive than is apparent to warrant "a selection of the lives of young men who have fallen in the great war." Selections in this instance are more odious than comparisons; there should be one book for one hero. ”

“ It is said that the question of neutrality has caused most of the delay in the formation of the League of Nations. We certainly realise the difficulty in deciding how Norway and Switzerland could come to grips, in the event of a War between these two countries, without infringing the laws of neutrality.
"No harm to the moon will result from the eclipse of the sun on May 28th," states a writer in an evening paper. This is good news for those who have mining shares there.
There is a falling off in the tanning of kids in India, says The Shoe and Leather Trades Record. ”

“ Many of them are young and some beautiful. The romance of commerce and of the stage will prove a potent lure. Never has the demand for an elegant deportment and urbane manners in our great shops and stores been more clamant; never has the standard been higher. Our ex-officials may have to stoop, but it will be to conquer. ”

“ There are all sorts of stunts for attracting attention to round white arms, and if one has the other kind one had better go and do a rest-cure. Your Blanche is beyond criticism in that respect, as you know, and the other night at the opera I'd a succès fou with a big black-enamel beetle, held in place by an invisible platinum chain, crawling on my upper arm. ”

“ Sterling Sticks it Out (HEADLEY) is a generous attempt to put into the form of a story the case of the conscientious objector of the finest type, that, when we are able to think about this matter calmly, we shall have considerable misgivings at least about details in our treatment of this difficult problem. I also agree that the officials of the Press Bureau don't come at all well out of the correspondence which he prints in his preface, and, further, that the Government ought to have had the courage to alter the law allowing absolute exemption rather than stretch it beyond the breaking point. ”

“ A movement, we hear, is on foot to give a public welcome to the cheeses on their return to our midst. It is thought that a march-past could easily be arranged.
Hackney will supply electricity to consumers at a special rate during the Peace celebrations. The present price of one-and-sixpence per kilowatt-and-soda practically inhibits anything like deep-seated festivity. ”

“ Even the gunners, who in the late war used to wear riding-breeches of their favourite colour, no matter what it was, the kind of footgear they most fancied, and any old variety of hat they thought becoming, are shocked by the fantastic kit that is countenanced in this latitude. It must be borne in mind that most of us are old campaigners and old nomads whose tailors have grown accustomed to build us appropriate gear for various climes. ”

“ The real difficulty was created by men of a very different character and in much greater numbers, sincere in varying degrees, but deliberately, passionately and unscrupulously obstructive, bent on baulking the national will and making anything like reasonable treatment of them impossible. ”

“ Quite a number of the officials use train or bus, like ordinary folk; some have even been seen to walk; and there has been such a slump in "joy-riding" that when asked if ladies were now carried in the official chariots General SEELY was able to assure the House that that never happens ”

“ What idea will the North Russians retain of the outward appearance of the typical British officer? How will the little Lapps, befurred and smiling, who come sliding to market behind the trotting reindeer, report of us to the smaller Lapps at home? In any case I hope we shall found a legend of a well-meaning if peculiar and patchwork people.
British Matron (whose husband has just had his weekly coat of woad, to visitor) . "I'M SORRY, SIR, BUT MY HUSBAND CAN'T SEE YOU TILL HE'S DRY."
"Gas Stoker wanted for 11 million works, used to gas engine and exhauster ”

“ We can confidently look forward to the day when no shop will be without its DEMOSTHENES, ALCIBIADES or its CICERO. Opportunities for employment on the stage are likely to be multiplied by the alleged intention of several actor-managers to enter Parliament, while others, nobly anxious to satisfy the claims of youth, have expressed their resolve only to appear henceforth in such subsidiary parts as dead bodies and outside shouts. ”

“ Sport is the only department in which the ornate and orotund style of which Mr. ASQUITH is a master is still in vogue, and the description of classic events in classical diction will furnish him with a congenial opening for the exercise of his great literary talent. ”

“ When 'Orace or 'Erbert pleased her I got a share of the sunshine, but when their love-making cooled her displeasure was visited on poor Ronnie. Any advances on my own part were countered with sales of soap, customers apparently being rarer than lovers. ”

“ There have been cases, we believe, in which the height of a person has increased after the person had reached mature age, but it has always been suspected that this was due to greater uprightness. A man who stoops always looks shorter than when he is standing quite upright. ”

“ It is further rumoured that some of our judges intend to follow his august example. The atmosphere of the Bench is not always exhilarating, and the salary is fixed. But a self-effacing altruism doubtless also enters into their motives. ”

“ But one day letters from 'Orace and 'Erbert arrived simultaneously, and were duly handed to the fourth party for necessary action. It occurred to me that when the time came for me to enter the race on my own behalf I need have little fear of 'Erbert as a rival, so I determined to cut 'Orace out of the running. ”