Various

“ John arose with difficulty from the ashes and addressed himself haughtily to Cecilia.
"I can understand that these two," he said, waving a black but contemptuous hand at Margery and myself, "should scream with delight. Their whole conception of humour is bound up with banana-skins and orange-peel. But may I ask why you should have hysterics because your husband has fallen into the fireplace?" ”

“ I don't know any of these new-fangled dances and I don't want to."
"Don't be so obstinate," said Cecilia. "What you want doesn't matter. You've got to learn, so you may as well give way decently. Come along now, I'll play for you, and Margery will show you the steps."
"If Margery attempts to show me the steps I shall show her the door. I won't be bullied in my own house. Why don't you make your brother dance, if somebody must?" said John, waving his arm at me. ”

“ John and I leaned against each other and laughed helplessly.
"When you have finished," said Cecilia with a cold eye, "perhaps you will decide which of you is going to have the first lesson."
"Good heavens," said John tragically, "haven't they forgotten the dancing yet?"
"We may as well give way, John," I said; "we shall get no peace until we do."
"I suppose not," said John dismally "Very well, then, you're her brother you shall have first go."
He waved me politely to Margery. ”

“ His speeches have the moral fervour and intensity of one of the Minor Prophets—Nahum or Amos, in the opinion of some critics, though I personally incline to Malachi or Habakkuk. This personal magnetism which Mr. Lloyd George radiates in the House he radiates no less in 10, Downing Street, where a special radiatorium has been added to the breakfast-room to radiate it. Imagine an April morning, a kingfisher on a woody stream, poplar-leaves in the wind, a shower of sugar shaken suddenly from a sifter, and you have the man. ”

“ To get to Geneva you provide yourself with a passport, a book of rail and steamer tickets, a ticket for a seat in the Pulman car, a ticket for a berth in the sleeping-car and a ticket for the registration of your luggage. In short, by the time you are in France you will have had pass through your hands one passport and eleven tickets; and the first thing you will do upon settling down into the French train is to compete and intrigue to get a twelfth ticket for your lunch. ”

“ Lloyd George breaks down.
Let us turn then to the younger Pitt. I have read somewhere of the younger Pitt that he cared more for power than for measures, and was ready to sacrifice great causes with which he had sincerely sympathised rather than raise an opposition that might imperil his ascendency. That is just the kind of nasty and long-winded thing that anybody might say about anybody. ”

“ It may or may not be well that the War has modified our estimate of the value of life; but it is a bad thing for the legitimate drama. And in the case of Fédora the bloody régime of Lenin has so paled our memory of the terrors of Nihilism that Sardou's play seems almost further away from us than the tragedy of Agamemnon. In our callous incapacity to be thrilled by the ancient horrors of forty years ago we fall back on the satisfaction to be got out of the author's dexterity in the mechanics of his craft. ”

“ The death of Fédora, again, was the direct result of a letter which she despatched to Petersburg denouncing a man who proved, in the light of fresh facts learned a few minutes later, to be the last (or last but one) that she would wish to injure. It is incredible that she should not have hastened to send a second letter withdrawing her charge; "instead of which" she goes casually off on a honeymoon with his brother, and apparently never gives another thought to the matter till it is fatally too late. ”

“ THE LIGHT FANTASTIC
"Dancers are born, not made," said John.
"Some are born dancers," corrected Cecilia, "others achieve dancing."
"Well, I'm not going to have it thrust on me any way," retorted John. "I never have liked dancing and I never shall. I haven't danced for years and years and I don't intend to. ”

“ The Volcano appears to be in advance of The Daily Blast in its ideals, and immensely so in their expression. But here again I assured Stuttfield that no one took them seriously. "I don't suppose they take themselves seriously," I assured him. "They want to sell The Volcano, that's all."
"Yes," said Stuttfield, "but they do sell it, and people read it."
"I expect the circulation's about two thousand a week," I said consolingly. But Stuttfield, as I could see, was not consoled. ”

“ While exploring them one would make the odd discovery that, whereas the humour that surrounds and saturates the idea of a wife possessing a maternal relative is inexhaustible, there is nothing laughable about the mother of a husband. A wife can talk of her husband's mother all day and never have the reputation of a wit, whereas her husband has but to mention her mother and he is the rival of the Robeys.
As for fathers-in-law, low comedians would starve if they had to depend on the help that fathers-in-law give them. Fathers-in-law do not exist. ”

“ Turning from the lake to the international delegates, who abound in Geneva, it is to be noted that the last lot here were the International Congress of Leagues of Women. Their main agendum was to pronounce their complete independence of men. One of these delegates went for a row on the lake and fell in. She was pulled out again by a man.
You will find that Geneva was nominated as the seat of the League in the Peace Treaty of Versailles. Ever since, the people of Geneva have been busy conjecturing what the League of Nations will do upon its arrival in Geneva. ”

“ A bathroom has been annexed to every room. Presumably every international delegate will have a suite allotted to his nation. The question I ask myself is this, Will he put himself in the room and his secretaries in the bathroom, or himself in the bathroom and the secretaries in the room? And the answer I make to myself is as follows: The delegate will appoint the room to be his room and the bathroom to be his bathroom and will leave his secretaries to make the best of things out in the corridor. The suggestion you will probably make is that there are more suites of rooms than nations ”

“ There can be no doubt that Bunbury is right. I am so convinced of it that when next my tailor inquires anxiously what steps are being taken for the distribution of prize-money I shall put the matter to him just as Bunbury put it to me. He is certain to understand. ”

“ You will find that this useless ticket will follow you all the way to Geneva and will always assert itself when you are accosted by a ticket inspector. I even know a traveller who arrived eventually at the Swiss frontier with no other paper of identity or justification; for a passport which should have given his name, address, motive for travelling, shape of mouth, size of nose and any other peculiarities, he could only tender documentary evidence of his having eaten the nineteenth lunch of the first series of the day before. ”

“ I said ribaldly, and Stuttfield left me in disgust.
Then I heard from a friend that he had sold his cottage at Redhill. This was a bad sign, and I went to see him. I found him much worse.
"You've taken an overdose of The Volcano," I said.
He seized my arm with trembling fingers.
"The Red Revolution is upon us," he hissed.
I laughed. "Don't you worry about the Red Revolution. You come out to lunch."
He would hardly be persuaded. Clubs and restaurants would be attacked first, he thought. If we lunched together it had better be in an eating-house in Bermondsey. ”

“ And let me say at once that, for the best of reasons, I do not propose to compete with the erudition of my fellow-critics in the matter of previous interpreters, for I bring a virgin mind to my consideration of the merits of the present cast.
Fédora is the most exhausting test to which Miss Marie Löhr has yet put her talent. The heroine's emotions are worked at top-pressure almost throughout the play. At the very start she is torn with passionate grief for the death of her lover and a still more passionate desire to take vengeance on the man who killed him. ”

“ It is the brother-in-law who knows of absolutely safe gilt-edged investments (which rarely succeed) , and has to be helped while waiting for something to turn up; it is the sister-in-law who is so firmly convinced that dear Clara (her brother's wife) is spoiling the children. But both escape; while many really charming old ladies, to whom their sons-in-law are devoted, continue to be riddled by the world's satirical bullets. ”

“ It was by disregarding this kind of criticism that the younger Pitt kept on being younger. But apart from this, does Mr. Lloyd George quote Horace in the House? Never, thank goodness. How many times did William Pitt cross the English Channel? Only once in his whole life. That settles it.
The predominant note—I may almost say the keynote—of the Prime Minister's character is rather a personal magnetism such as has never been exercised by any statesman before or after. When he rises to speak in the House all eyes are riveted on him as though with a vice until he has finished speaking. ”

“ The audacity of some people in thinking that anything happened before The Daily Mail started is simply appalling.
Three stars have recently been discovered by an American. No, no; not those stars, but stars in the heavens.
"Whilst returning to camp one night I walked right into a herd of elephants," states a well-known explorer in his memoirs. We have always maintained that all wild animals above the size of a rabbit should carry two head-lights and one rear-light whilst travelling after dark. ”

“ Someone mentions the word 'prize-money.' Immediately the Lords of the Admiralty reach for their record files and begin turning over the pages. They come upon the names of John Augustus Plimsoll—yourself—and Horatio Bunbury—me. 'Ah,' they exclaim fondly, 'two of our old gunroom veterans—when shall we look upon their like again?' Then they get up and go out to lunch.
"A month or so later the same thing occurs; once more our names leap out from the type-written page. 'Brave boys,' they murmur, 'gallant lads! What should we have done without them in the dark days? ”

“ If his Stephen, in whom the highest poetic talents are found tainted with a touch of coarseness, may not always be credible, the passion for self-expression which leads him on to versify his own experience in the form of a mediæval idyll, and so give himself away, is true to life. ”

“ When she learns the unworthiness of the one and the justification of the other those emotions are instantly exchanged for a passionate worship of the late object of her vengeance, to be followed by bitter remorse for the harm she has done him and terror of the consequences when he comes to know the truth. ”

“ We have here in a nutshell the case for traditional communal humour, and once again we are set to wondering why—except possibly to allay some whimsical twinges of self-respect—dramatists ever try to invent new jokes at all. ”

“ During the more or less stormy times of the First Great War, we of the Navy were always able to buttress our resolution with golden hopes of a future opulence denied to our less fortunate comrades in the trenches. ”

“ THE NEW JOURNALISM.
["In New York Mr. Harding leads by a figure something like the circulation of The Daily Mail. Pennsylvania gives him a majority which appears equal to the circulation of The Evening News. It is phenomenal."
—The Evening News.]
The method which is being used just now by some of Mr. Punch's contemporaries to draw attention to their circulations does not, it will be seen, tend to numerical nicety, though doubtless it has its advantages from the advertising point of view. The following items of news are intelligently anticipated. ”

“ To sum up, They Went is perhaps not for idle, certainly not for unintelligent, reading; for those who can appreciate quality in a strange guise it will provide a feast of unfamiliar flavours that may well create an appetite for more. ”

“ A Prohibitionist asserts that Scotland will be dry in five years. Our own feeling is that these end-of-the-world prognostications should be prohibited by law.
An Oxford professor has made himself the subject of a series of experiments on the effects of alcohol. Several college professors of America quite readily admit that they never thought of that one.
A correspondent writes to a contemporary to say that he wears a hat exactly like The Daily Mail hat, and that he purchased it long before The Daily Mail was started. ”

“ Just the sort of thing for a bad sailor to take with him when crossing the Channel on a rough day.
"Everyone knows," a writer in The Daily Mail declares, "that electric light in the poultry-house results in more eggs." There may be more of them but they never have the real actinic taste of the natural egg.
An American inventor has devised a scheme for lassoing enemy submarines. ”

“ Still, in these days when State economy is so needful, it would be better if the desired effect were attained by the pressure of enlightened public opinion rather than by the operations of even so inexpensive a department as that contemplated by the Minister of Health. ”

“ I make my living by writing up the towns of Switzerland as one by one they get sat on. As there are not more than half-a-dozen eligible towns in Switzerland, and as we shall have exhausted two of them in less than half a year, the living I make is a precarious one ”