Various

“ Bookham Pryce made his sensational début on the Lincoln course in the spring of 1894. We might linger here a moment to muse over the simple beginnings of great men, but time is pressing and we are all agog to visit the Bargain Basement.
An express lift flashes us downwards in a few seconds and behold we are in the midst of rows of counters groaning under bargains that even the New Poor can scarce forbear to grasp. ”

“ From the door of the room where the dancing was done a confused uproar overflowed, as if several men of powerful physique were banging a number of pokers against a number of saucepans, and blowing whistles, and occasional catcalls, and now and then beating a drum and several sets of huge cymbals, and ceaselessly twanging at innumerable banjoes, and at the same time singing in a foreign language, and shouting curses or exhortations or street cries, or imitating hunting-calls and the cry of the hyena, or uniting suddenly in the war-whoop of some pitiless Sudan tribe. ”

“ I said modestly. "I have my own business to see to. But the F.O. have always wanted to have something to do with me. So I gave them the job of looking after your mother's hat. Had I known that they would send it along by any Tom, Dick or George who happened to drop in and offer to take the bag—"
George snatched the bag, examined it hastily and then tried to conceal it behind his own luggage. But Geraldine knows enough about hats to be able to spot a hatbox, when put to it, through all the heavy canvas and all the fancy labels in the world. ”

“ He studies the bunch of communications that the visitor bears in his hand. If they are all right—cheques from publishers, editors and missing-heir merchants, invitations to tea and tennis or dinner and dominoes, requests for autographs—Timon nods and allows the postman to pass unscathed. On the other hand, if the collection includes rejected manuscripts, income or other tax demand notes, tracts or circulars, then I hear the low growl with which Timon customarily goes into action, and the next moment the postman is making for the neighbouring county and taking a four-foot gate in his stride. ”

“ A pleasant old fellow with a smiling weather-beaten face, grey moustache and a cloth cap, whom I have known for most of the six years during which he has stood every afternoon except Sundays on the kerb between a lamp-post and a letter-box at one of London's busiest corners. ”

“ Geraldine acquiesced. She doesn't often do that, but when she does it is extremely pleasant for the acquiescee. I pressed on with my explanation desperately. "I can hear poor old George pleading in a broken voice that he had to get to Paris and dared not go by himself. So they listened to his sad story and gave him a bag to see him through, and it isn't George who is taking the bag to Paris, but the bag which is taking George." ”

“ But, to return to the main subject, we have lost Timon. One month has passed without his cheery presence at Bellevue. Reckless postmen have made themselves free of the front garden and all colour has gone out of life.
We have done everything to win him back. We have inserted numerous advertisements in the agony columns of the newspapers: "If this should catch the eye of Timon," or "Come back, Timon. All will be forgiven;" but apparently we have yet to find his favourite newspaper. ”

“ You dance as many nights a week as is physically possible; you dance on week-days and you dance on Sundays; you begin dancing in the afternoon and you dance during tea in the coffee-rooms of expensive restaurants, whirling your precarious way through littered and abandoned tea-tables ”

“ George then set about to make the most of himself. Geraldine abetted. Geraldine is a terror. I became more determined than ever to marry her, George and the King notwithstanding. George however got going. "For a plain fellow like myself" (he knows how confoundedly handsome he is) "it has been some little satisfaction to be selected as a Special Courier."
I explained the method of selection as I guessed it. "He forced his way into the F.O. and in an obsequious tone, which you and I, Geraldine, would be ashamed to adopt, begged for the favour of a bag to carry with him. ”

“ If they fell down they lay still for a moment in the fearful expectation of death, as men lie who fall under a horse; and then they would creep on hands and knees to the wall through the whirling and indifferent crowd. ”

“ Bodies buffeted one from behind, and while one was yet looking round in apology or anger more bodies buffeted one from the flank. It was like swimming in a choppy sea, where there is no time to get the last wave out of your mouth before the next one hits you. ”

“ It was eventually, if arduously, arranged that in this instance the despatch should consist of the hat itself ...
My fascinating manner of greeting Geraldine on Victoria Station did not betray the fact that I had seen that arch-villain, George Nesbitt, installed in our train, looking terribly important. George doesn't want to marry any girl; every girl therefore wants to marry George. I managed to hustle Geraldine into our carriage and get her locked in without her seeing George. ”

“ Only on Clause 70, providing for the repeal of the Home Rule Act of 1914, did any prolonged debate arise. Captain Wedgwood Benn pleasantly described this as the only clause in the Bill that was not nonsense, and therefore moved its omission. He was answered by the Prime Minister, who declared that no Irishman would now be content with the Act of 1914, and defended the present Bill on the curious ground that it gave Ireland as much self-government as Scotland had ever asked for. Sir Edward Carson's plea that it was a case of "this Bill or an Irish Republic" was probably more convincing. ”

“ No true Franciscan need be told that he comes through his struggle, with flying colours. So quietly and easily does the tale run that one is apt to overlook the art with which it is told. But the art is there all the time. ”

“ Mary Gore, representing a brother on the board of Cupreouscine and backing Jim through thick and thin to the limit of her powers, must be excepted. In spite of her gracious reserve and self-possession, it is plain that Mary loves the busy managing director; but Jim's feelings are more difficult to fathom. In fact he is so long in mentioning his passion that it is quite a relief when, on the last page but one, what publishers call the "love interest" suddenly strengthens and their engagement is announced, very suitably and to her entire satisfaction, to the charwoman at the foundry. ”

“ Some of them kept themselves as upright as possible, swaying slightly like willows from the hips, and some of them contorted themselves into strange and angular shapes, now leaning perilously forward till they were practically lying upon their terrified partners, and now bending sideways as a man bends who has water in one ear after bathing. ”

“ Bridgeman replied that control having been removed the Government could do nothing, and consumers must find their own remedy—a reply which drove Sir Frederick into such paroxysms of indignation that the Speaker was obliged to intervene.
Mr. Kiley's gloomy vaticinations as to the disastrous effect of the Plumage Bill on British commerce met with no encouragement from Sir Robert Horne. In his opinion, I gather, our foreign trade is quite safe, and the Bill will not knock a feather out of it. ”

“ He stands about two hands high, is of a reseda-green shade, except when in anger, and has no distinguishing marks except the absence of a piece of the right ear, which was carried off by a marauding Irish terrier. He answers with a growl to many names, including that of Timon. He will also answer to a piece of raw meat, another dog or a postman.
I do not know if dogs can be said to have a hobby; if so, Timon's hobby is postmen. He studies them closely. ”

“ Sir John is a working farmer, and Lady Beck does menial duties with an energy that most servants of to-day would not care to imitate. The apple of their old eyes is their grandson, Roger, and the story turns on his struggle between pride and love. ”

“ How the House of Pryce can offer such bargains is a mystery to the old school of red-necked bookmakers, whose Oxford accent was not pronounced. They fail to see what courtesy, urbanity and meat-teas at three shillings per head can do in the way of stimulating business. ”

“ Consequently it is to be anticipated that if the Olympic Games are ever held in our neighbourhood the sprint and the hurdles will be simply at the mercy of our local post-office. They take no credit for it. It is simply practice, they say. ”

“ Whereupon Sir Maurice Dockrell, in his richest brogue, summarised the Irish situation as follows: "Is not the difficulty that they do not know which horse to back?"
A Bill "to continue temporarily the office of Food Controller" was read a first time. The House would, I think, be sorry to part with Mr. McCurdy, whose replies to Questions are often much to the point. He was asked this afternoon, for example, to give the salaries of three of his officials, and this was his crisp reply: "The Director of Vegetable Supplies serves the Ministry without remuneration ”

“ It is not possible to continue writing if Elizabeth desires to make conversation at the same time.
"Certainly I shall, if I hear of a sale of cheap crockery," I replied pointedly; "ours badly needs replenishing."
The barbed arrow did not find its mark. It may require a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotsman, but only the medium of some high explosive could properly convey a hint to Elizabeth.
"'Oo wants to go to sales to buy things like pots?" asked Elizabeth scornfully.
"People who are always getting their pots broken," I replied in italics. ”

“ How he came to think out this novel plan is what mystifies the man in the street.
There is one reason, we read, why tea cannot be sold cheaper. If "The Profiteer" is not the right answer, it's quite a good guess.
No burglar seems to visit the houses of the profiteers, says a Labour speaker. Perhaps they have a delicacy about dealing with people in the same line of business. ”

“ In America it is just a full-size wrist-watch.
According to a medical writer, hearing can often be restored by a series of low explosions. The patient is advised to stand quite close to a man who has just received his tailor's bill. ”

“ I was careful to do as I was told, because I have a friend who paints Expressionist pictures, and I wished to deliver it at his studio. It seems to me that Priscilla, half-unconsciously perhaps, is founding a new school of art which demands serious study. One might call it, I think, the Pookin School. ”

“ Tuesday, June 29th.—The establishment of a "National home" for the Jewish race in Palestine aroused the apprehensions of Lord Sydenham and other Peers, who feared that the Moslem inhabitants would be exploited by the Zionists, and would endeavour to re-establish Turkish rule. Lord Curzon did his best to remove these impressions. Authority in Palestine would be exercised by Great Britain as the Mandatory Power, and the Zionists would not be masters in their "national home," but only a sort of "paying guests." ”

“ They have more grit, determination—"
"Sharper elbows is wot you mean," put in Elizabeth. "It's chiefly a matter of 'oo pushes 'ardest. My! I love a sale if only for the sake o' the scrimmage. A friend o' mine 'oo's been separated from 'er 'usband becos they was always fightin' told me she never misses goin' to a sale so that she'll be in practice in case 'er and 'er old man make it up again."
"I'm not surprised that I never get any bargains," I commented, "although I often long to. Look at the advertisement in this newspaper, for instance. Here's a silk jumper which is absurdly cheap. ”

“ Geraldine got her full [pg 9] deserts—me; and if George had the misfortune to sit on the bag in the taxi, what matter? Geraldine had acquiesced; after that who cared what Geraldine's mother did, said, thought or wore?
Small Boy. "Who's that fat man, Dad?"
Dad. "Don't know. He looks like a profiteer."
Small Boy. "Don't you think he must be one of the excess profiteers?"
"Lady Clerk wanted for office work, with an engineering firm, a few miles out of Leeds; also able to cook and serve a luncheon for the principals."—Yorkshire Paper.
If you want a cook nowadays you must employ a little diplomacy. ”

“ I answered; "I've seen them—in the advertisements. But I never secure any."
"Why don't you, then?"
"Because of all the other people, Elizabeth. Those who get the bargains seem to have a more dominant nature than mine. ”

“ Here, of course, is a theme capable of infinite varieties of development; the tragedies of heredity have kept novelists and dramatists busy since fiction began. The trouble is that, all unconsciously, Mr. Compton-Rickett has given to his hero's struggles a fatally humorous turn. Philip's initial mistake appeared to be the supposition that safety could be secured by flight. But it has been remarked before now that Cupid is winged and doth range. Philip dashed into the depths of Devonshire, only to discover that even there farmers have pretty daughters ”

“ That is to say, they keep on paying dancing-instructors to teach them new tricks; and the dancing-instructors, who know their business, keep on inventing new tricks. As soon as they have taught everybody a new step they say it is unfashionable and invent a new one. ”

“ Two days ago the Minister of Transport expounded in a White Paper his elaborate plan for redistributing and co-ordinating the activities of the railway companies—the North Eastern excepted—and directing them all from an office in Whitehall. By the Ministry of Mines Bill it is proposed to treat the mines in much the same way. Sir Eric Geddes' scheme has yet to run the gauntlet of Parliamentary criticism. Sir Robert Horne's had its baptism of fire this afternoon, and a pretty hot fire it was. Miners like Mr. ”