Various

“ I have always had the impression that Miss Penn-Cushing regarded me as a humble entomological specimen until the other day when she paid me a staggering compliment. She herself teaches all the English literature in her academy, and each class in turn goes up to her room to receive its daily dose. Mollie says that when she grows up she is going to give up English literature for ever and read something interesting. ”

“ My own position is that I know how to write poetry, but I can't be bothered. I have not got the itch. The least I can do, however, is to try to help those who have.
A mistake commonly committed by novices is to make up their minds what it is they are going to say before they begin. This is superfluous effort, tending to cramp the style. It is permissible, if not essential, to select a subject—say, MUD—but any detailed argument or plan which may restrict the free development of metre and rhyme (if any) is to be discouraged. ”

“ This will afford you an excuse for a return journey to the pavilion, during which your gait will lose nothing in stateliness if you can manage to adopt the goose-step. On your return to the wicket you will probably find, if the weather is mild and the grass dry, that the fieldsmen are reclining on the ground; it will enhance your reputation for nonchalance and good-fellowship if you can contrive to give one of them a playful pat with your bat in passing, especially if he is a total stranger to you and much your senior. ”

“ At first sight the student may think that "nakedly" is not a good rhyme for "sea." Nor is it. If you do that kind of thing in comic poetry no editor will give you money. But in serious poetry it is quite legitimate; in fact it is rather encouraged. That is why serious poetry is so much easier than comic poetry. In my next lecture I shall deal with comic poetry.
I don't think I shall finish this poem now. The fact is, I am not feeling so inspired as I was. It is very hot. Besides, I have got hay-fever and keep on sneezing. Constant sneezing knocks all the inspiration out of a man. ”

“ Under the prevailing system, the psychological factor, the most important of all, is entirely neglected. The most trying moment of a cricketer's life is when he first steps forth alone from the pavilion of a public ground. ”

“ I don't know why the antelopes want a telephone more than all the other animals, but they do. Of course if they knew how bad the telephone is they would realise that with their long legs they could get there and back again in much quicker time than it takes to get a call through.
And then there are the Small Birds. It is not known to everybody, least of all, I think, to poets, that the nightingale sings best of all in a cage in broad daylight and amongst a lot of other birds, all twittering away like anything. ”

“ Sometimes, and especially in vers libre of an emotional and digressive character, the reader has a hideous fear that he has turned over two pages and got into another poem altogether. This little trick reassures him; and if you are writing vers libre you must not lose any legitimate opportunity of reassuring the reader.
To treat the same theme in metre and rhyme will be a much more difficult matter. The great thing will be to avoid getting mud at the end of a line, for the reasons already given. We had better have long ten-syllable lines, and we had better have four of them in each verse. ”

“ The selection of a horse to bear our fortunes to victory was not made without anxious debate, since Selina's choice was based upon the colour scheme of the jockey's coats, and mine on the romantic associations of the animals' names. In the end we compromised on a horse called Grand Parade.
Next, equally momentous, we selected a bookmaker who was to oblige us by opposing our fancy at the most advantageous rate. I was in favour of picking a man whose abundance of chin and paunch would, should he default, prevent his attaining more than four miles an hour on the flat. ”

“ Elizabeth, I ought perhaps to explain, is uncertain about her young men. She never has any lack of them; but they are like ships that pass in the night (her night out as a rule) and one by one they drift off, never stopping to cast anchor in her vicinity. You know what I mean. Elizabeth can't keep a young man. ”

“ But you are not very much interested in coal or poetry, and will probably like the Sugar Birds best, for, if there is anything more delightful than being a bird, especially a tiny little bird, blue or green underneath, it must be living on sugar and having grapes stuck in the bars of your cage. ”

“ I ask for nothing beyond." I gave her nineteen.
And now comes the tragedy. Miss Penn-Cushing's letter of thanks was icy. She feared I had been "a thought nepotic," and (with my permission) she would revise my marks.
She dealt me the final blow at our Speech-Day. "I have decided," she gave out, "to award the first prize in Literature to Miss Katie de Pinnock. I am sure, though, that you will not be surprised to hear that Mr. Marcus O'Reilly, our examiner, was so impressed with the literary excellence of all your papers that he has presented the whole class with consolation prizes. ”

“ What is more, when Alan, as such young gentlemen in fiction generally do, changes his mind Miss Dart provides a happy ending, without even a suicide to spoil it, and without inconsistency either in her own point of view or in that of her characters. ”

“ Nevertheless, so bitter is the feeling which has been aroused that large subsidies are being sent overseas and Black Hand gangs organised to resist the London police. All over the outer suburbs organ-grinders are refusing to move on, and insist on playing well into the early hours of the morning. ”

“ It is not easy to be an examiner, I found. I would rather write ten leading articles than one examination-paper. It appeared that I had to set themes for essays as well as questions in literature. We never learnt literature when I was young and I didn't know you could, but I borrowed a text-book from Mollie and did my best. ”

“ The yellow mud lay mourning nakedly.
There is a good deal to be said against these two lines. For one thing I am not sure that the mud ought to be yellow; it will remind people of Covent Garden Tube Station, and no one wants to be reminded of that. However, it does suggest the inexpressible biliousness of the theme.
I think "levels" is a little weak. It is a good poetical word and doesn't mean anything in particular; but we have too many words of that kind in this verse. "Deserts" would do, except that deserts and mud don't go very well together. ”

“ It will be seen at once that we are not going to have much rhyme in this poem; or if we do we shall very soon be compelled to strike a sinister note, because almost the only rhymes to mud are blood and flood; while, as the authors of our hymns have discovered, there are very few satisfactory rhymes to God. They shamefully evaded the difficulty by using words like road, but in first-class poetry one cannot do that. On the whole, therefore, this poem had better be vers libre. ”

“ The bears by rights should be fed on umbrellas, because they suck the stick and the ribs of the frame for all the world as if they were pieces of asparagus, and tear the silk part very carefully into tiny little shreds. ”

“ Speaking of Lord Beaverbrook he says, "He had come to London a decade ago, to live 'the life of a gentleman,' but was drawn irresistibly into politics." I challenge our literature to produce a more beautiful "but." ”

“ But umbrellas are very expensive just now and the keeper does not think they are very good for the bears either. It is better to give them oranges, but oranges are expensive too, so you must make quite certain that you do not waste them on the grizzlies which are not on the Mappin Terraces at all. It is no use giving an orange to a grizzly bear, because it goes down with one quick motion, like the red into the right-hand top pocket. ”

“ Experience has taught us that if complete latitude is given to eccentrics and incompetents, if, in the words of Professor Soddy, F.R.S., the destinies of the country are entrusted to people of archaic mental outlook, the result is bound to be disastrous and chaotic. ”

“ Grave evils call for drastic treatment, and in view of the hectic condition of the Stock Exchange and the "vicious circle" round which industrialism is now unhappily revolving I cannot but think that the temporary seclusion of the Ministry in a psychopathic ward might be fraught with economic consequences of the utmost importance. Even if they were only able to reduce our indebtedness at the same rate as that attained by the American millionaire, their combined efforts would represent a magnificent total. ”

“ The newspapers have recently devoted a certain amount of space to the American millionaire who, while confined in a psychopathic ward of a private lunatic asylum, by his clever financial manipulations added in the course of six weeks five hundred thousand pounds to a fortune "conservatively estimated at three million pounds." ”

“ As a matter of fact you will find that the giraffe is not standing near the bars at all, but close to its stable, where it is mincing and bridling exactly like a lady in a Victorian novel, and as for the hippopotamus you cannot see the pretty pink part of him because he is giving his famous imitation of a submarine. ”

“ It is a common fallacy among cricketing coaches and their pupils that when the young batsman has mastered all the strokes that can be imparted to him at the nets his education is complete. So far from that being the case, it has barely begun. ”

“ Margaret thought this over. "It sounds just the same as the hand-made," she said.
"Oh, no," I said quickly; "it's all done by machinery, you see. Pistons and rollers and—er—mechanical edge-decklers and so on."
"And what does 'Linen Wove' mean?"
"They employ people to thread the paper with linen threads, my dear. A very delicate performance; that's why Linen Wove is so expensive. Azure Wove is, of course, done with blue flaxen threads. Silurian Bond is made by a fellowship of geologists, and for Chelsea Bank they have a factory on the bank of the Thames at Cheyne Walk. ”

“ If the reader has been there too he will like the poem, and if he hasn't no harm is done. The only thing is that locally Chintonbury is probably pronounced Chun'bury, in which case it will not scan. One cannot be too careful about that sort of thing. However, as an illustration Chintonbury will serve.
It is now necessary to show somehow in this verse that the poem is about mud; it is also necessary to organise a rhyme for 'Hole' and a rhyme for 'sea,' and of the two this is the more important. ”

“ But nowadays complaints must be conveyed to domestics in this indirect way.
Elizabeth ignored the omelette. "I'm goin' to win fifty pounds at least," she exclaimed, and in her excitement broke the cup she held—I mean to say the cup came in two in her hand as she spoke. "I've got a bit on an 'orse for the Derby."
I felt slightly shocked. It is always surprising to discover a latent sporting instinct in one's domestics, unless they are highly placed and dignified domestics like butlers or head-footmen; but in a cook-general it seems peculiarly low. ”

“ The latest fad of the American golfer is to have a small painting made of himself in the act of driving. We feel, however, that it will be some time before English golfers will place orders for plaster casts of their language. ”

“ It is always diverting to the unspoilt soul when the principal lady goes to turn up one lamp and the other promptly glows instead; or when, a particularly obvious and commonplace knock assaulting the ear, she exclaims in tragic accents, "There's someone at the door;" ”

“ Perhaps it would be wiser to proceed tentatively and not commit ourselves for more than six weeks to start with. It is just conceivable that the treatment might stimulate extravagance instead of economy. Financial thrombosis is not unknown as one of the obscurer forms of megalomania. ”

“ The snakes of course are slimy sort of creatures and their house is a long way off, and, though we fully agree with you that the monkeys were just like real persons, we think we really ought to be starting home now. ”

“ Very briefly the tale is of one Noel Carton, who has married beneath him for not quite enough money to gild a detestable union, and, being an unstable egoist and waster, presently seeks consolation (and pocket money) by writing a novel founded in part on his own position. ”

“ A situation of extreme international delicacy has recently arisen. We understand, with regard to the impending strike of Italian organ-grinders and ice-cream merchants in the Metropolis, that Signori Rimbombo Furioso and Fagiuolo Antico, representing the Amalgamated Society of Itinerant Instrumentalists and the National Union of Refrigerated Tuck Sellers, have lately been invited to a conference with Dr. ”