Various

“ He would still send the telegram. But those who bet are different. They are minutely sensitive to outside occurrences; always seeking signs and interpreting them as favourable or unfavourable as the case may be; and refraining from doing anything so decisive as to call the girl to order. Their game is to be plastic under the fingers of chance; the faintest breath of dubiety can sway them. ”

“ I wish I had space to give you the plots of some of them; "Daffodils," for instance, a quite unexpected and thrilling treatment of perhaps the oldest situation of literature; or "Staking a Larkspur," the only instance in which Miss Sedgwick's gently smiling humour crystallizes definitely into comedy; or "Carnations," the most brilliantly written of all. As this liberty is denied me you must accept a plain record of very rare enjoyment and take steps to share it. ”

“ Nothing again could have been more naïve than the innocent home-coming of the domestic carving-knive, freshly sharpened, from the grinder's just in time to be diverted to the objects of a murderous enterprise. ”

“ Lure and a liking now and then to indulge in a little flutter over a gee (I am choosing my words very carefully) I had decided, after weighing the claims of all the other runners, to take the advice of the majority and back the favourite, although favourites acclaimed with stridency by the racing experts of the Press in unison have, I knew, a way of failing. In betting on races, however, there are two elements that are never lacking: hope against hope and an incomplete recollection of the past. ”

“ Whither in these littered and overcrowded islands should one flee to escape the spectacle of outworn and discarded boots? I should go to a mountain-top and amongst mountain-tops I should choose the highest. ”

“ But, I thought to myself, it must evidently be a profitable notion to employ a right-hand man, or why should this magnate person be so airy on the subject of salary? Would it not then pay me to engage somebody in a similar capacity? Increased production, in spite of Trade Union economics, is emphatically a need of the moment. With a right-hand man at my right hand (when he wasn't at my left) I could, I felt sure, increase [pg 234] my own output enormously; and I began to plan out my daily work under the reconstruction scheme.
I will call him "Snaggs" ”

“ John G. Ervine is a versatile author who exhibits that unevenness of quality which is generally the besetting sin of versatile authors. When he is good he is very good indeed, and in The Foolish Lovers (Collins) he is at his best. The Ulsterman is seldom either a lovable or an interesting character. He has certain rude virtues which command respect and other qualities, not in themselves virtues—such as clan conceit and an intensely narrow provincialism—that beget the virtues of industry, honesty and frugality. ”

“ The quite provincial young MacDermott cannot make London accept him at his own valuation and his novels are poor stuff. His wife, loyal to him but still more loyal to the MacDermott clan into which she has married and which now includes a little MacDermott, is the first to recognise that her husband had best seek romance in the family grocery business. Then the MacDermott himself, with that shrewdness which may be late in coming to an Ulsterman but never fails him altogether, realises it too and the story is finished. ”

“ A middle-aged and ultra-respectable London solicitor, whose thwarted youth periodically awakes in him and insists upon his indulging all those follies that should have been safely finished forty-odd years before—here, you will admit, is a figure simply bursting with every kind of possibility. ”

“ Ervine's skill lies in his ability not merely to draw his Ballyards hero to the life but to interest us in his unsuccessful efforts to become a successful writer. It is merely clan conceit that drives him forward in the pursuit of this purpose, for circumstances have clearly intended him to carry on the grocery business in which the family have achieved some success and a full measure of local esteem. The MacDermotts never failed to accomplish their purpose; he, as a MacDermott, proposed to achieve fame as a novelist. ”

“ I had been in so many minds about this thirty pound bet, which I could not really afford, that there was therefore nothing for it, after waiting the two minutes that seemed to be ten, but to tear up the message, in the belief that the friendly gods again had intervened. For luck is as much an affair of refraining as of rushing in. ”

“ I might have said that to press the button of a bell that does not ring gives one time to reflect on whether one really wants the thing one rang for, and thereafter on the whole vanity of human wishes, and so inculcates patience and self-discipline. ”

“ On glancing the other day through the only human column of my newspaper—that headed "Personal"—I was much intrigued by the advertisement of a gentleman who styled himself a "busy commercial magnate," and who announced his urgent need of a "right-hand man." The duties of the post were not particularised, but their importance was made clear by the statement that "any salary within reason" would be paid to a really suitable person. ”

“ The men I most admire at the present time, though I take care not to tell them so to their faces, are the men who can do everything. By this I don't mean people of huge intellectual attainments, like Cabinet Ministers, or tremendous physical powers, like Tarzan of the Apes. ”

“ There were several people in the carriage, and they were talking about what they had done during the railway strike last year, and what they would do if such a thing happened again. I said I should like to be a station-master if possible, because they had top-hats and grew such beautiful flowers. Only four or five trains seem to stop at our station during the day, and if there was a strike I suppose the number would be reduced to one or two. And I thought it would be rather nice to spend the day wearing a top-hat and watering the nasturtiums in the little rock-gardens behind the platform. ”

“ According to a weekly journal the art of camouflage played a most important part in recent naval warfare. It is, of course, quite an open secret that the Naval authorities are aware that one of our largest Dreadnoughts is somewhere in a certain English harbour, but, owing to the excellence of its camouflage, they have not yet been able to locate it.
We now learn that it was merely through an oversight that the pit ponies did not record their votes at the strike ballot. ”

“ I feel that Miss Margaret Symonds had a purpose in writing A Child of the Alps (Fisher Unwin) , but, unless it was to show how mistaken it is, as Basil, the Swiss farmer, puts it, "to think when thou shouldst have been living," it has evaded me. The book begins with a romantic [pg 239] marriage between an Englishwoman of some breeding and a Swiss peasant who is a doctor, and tells the history of their daughter until she is about to marry Basil, her original sweetheart. ”

“ Snaggs, then, will arrive punctually at nine every morning—no, on second thoughts he will sleep in, in case an inspiration that needs recording arrives after I have gone to bed. (I shrink from estimating how much wealth I have lost through going to sleep on my nocturnal inspirations, which the most thorough search next morning never avails to recapture; but a speaking-tube, with alarm attachment, running into Snaggs's room will alter all that.) ”

“ Or, if you wish good business connection, a directorship of the East India Company? The whole of the past lies before you. Give your children a fair start in life, that is what we say. Money is good, education is better, but distinguished ancestry is best of all. ”

“ You can always tell a witch, you know, and we'll keep out of their way. An' if a nasty fairy turns you into a frog a nice one will always turn you back quite soon. It's all right. You mustn't worry about that. ”

“ Behind me I heard an American lady suggest that if they could somehow distinguish the spirit from the body it would be better for our illusions. To which her neighbour expressed the opinion that they would eventually manage to do that feat. I await, less hopefully, this development in stage mechanism. Meanwhile Mary Rose has much to answer for.
"The Daisy" (Mr. Caine) . "What made you take a fancy to me?"
Julia (Miss Merrall) . "I dunno."
(Sympathetic appreciation of her ignorance on part of audience.) ”

“ Samuel Johnson himself did not hesitate to accept the bounty of this kindly monarch, though, while his predecessor reigned, the great lexicographer had defined a pensioner as "a state hireling" paid "for treason to his country."
Such are my friends the kings and queens of England. Happy the child who has such majesty to be his guardian spirit. To him life will be a pomp, where vulgar democracy can have no part, and death a trysting-place with old comrades—the child for whom ”

“ The next task will be the placing of this material, and that is how Snaggs's afternoons will be spent. I have always had an unnecessarily tender feeling for editors, and often, after laboriously giving birth to an article, have concealed it in a drawer rather than run the risk of boring anyone with its perusal. Snaggs, however, will be fashioned of more pachydermatous material and will daily make himself such a nuisance that they'll give him an order, and possibly a long contract, to get rid of him. ”

“ Not the least of the Committee's difficulties and achievements was to get the truth of our cause and policy so defined as to be susceptible of unequivocal statement by poster, leaflet, film and gramophone record. Sir Campbell Stuart perhaps tends to underrate the rival show, the German propaganda organization, whose work, if it did Germany little good, has done and is still doing colossal harm to us. ”

“ You'll be ever so tiny and you can draw funny frost pictures wiv rainbows and fold up flowers into buds and splash dew-water over everyfing at night and ride on butterflies and help the birds to make nests. ”

“ HEADGEAR FOR HEROES.
[A contemporary, having heard of the hat specially designed for M. Clemenceau, has decided that the bowler, the topper, the Homburg, the straw, the cloth cap and all other styles at present more or less in vogue leave much to be desired, and has therefore inaugurated a search for the ideal male headdress.]
The Smillie.—A Phrygian model, executed in red Russia leather. Special features are the asbestos lining, the steam vents and the water-jacket, which combine to minimise the natural heat of the head. ”

“ The man who can do everything is the kind of man who can mend a thing like a broken door-handle as soon as look at it. He always knows which of the funny things you push or pull on any kind of machine to make it go or stop, and what is wrong with the cistern and the drawing-room clock. ”

“ They have also dug a large moat right through the lawn and the garden-path, which rather spoils the appearance of these places, though it is nice to be able to pull up the drawbridge at night and feel that one is safe from burglars. ”

“ Why should the mere accident of death prevent us from honouring a man if his family were prepared to contribute towards the country's exchequer? But these letters will give you a clearer insight into the working of the department. ”

“ Applicant for Post. "Fourteen—and unmarried."
These wrapper-artists should really exercise a little more discretion. To depict on the outside of a book the facsimile of a cheque for ten thousand pounds might well be to excite in some readers a mood of wistfulness only too apt to interfere with their appreciation of the contents. Fortunately, Uncle Simon (Hutchinson) is a story quite cheery enough even to banish reflections on the Profiteer. ”

“ The Eric.—An adaptation of the cap of maintenance in a special elastic material, warranted not to burst under pressure of abnormal expansion of the head of the wearer. Practically fool-proof.
The Winnie.—A fore-and-aft derived from a French model of the First Empire period, the severity of which is mitigated by the addition of little bells. A novelty is the mouthpiece in the crown, which enables the hat to be used as a megaphone at need. An elastic loop holds a fountain-pen in position. The whole to be worn on a head several sizes too big for it. ”

“ The ordinary man, having written out his telegram, on whatever subject it may be—whether it announces that he will arrive before lunch and bring his clubs with him, or that, having important business to detain him at the office, he will not be home to dinner—gets it through as soon as possible. ”

“ Ah! that's what's wanted so badly to-day for the headgear of the Higher Clergy.
"V.C.W. Jupp, the Sussex amateur, has been invited to become a member of the M.C.C. team, which leaves for Australia on Saturday. A fine all-round cricketer, Jupp is a useful man to any team, but as he usually fields cover-point his inclusion would not necessarily improve the side in its weakest point—viz., the lack of oilfields."—Daily Paper. ”

“ Few purchases give greater satisfaction. If, as you say, your late maternal grandfather was curate of Slowden, and was, as far as you are aware, a man of exemplary character, we could make him a bishop without delay. ”

“ The making out the commission will be put in hand on the receipt of your cheque for three hundred guineas.'"
"Do you always give satisfaction?"
"Occasionally we have to disappoint people. For instance, this letter to a lady at Plymouth:—
"'We fear we cannot grant your request to reserve a berth on the Mayflower for your delightful ancestress, Mrs. ”

“ That is the old-fashioned English of it."—Bangalore Daily Post.
It would be interesting to see the old-fashioned Latin of it.
"Will any Lady Recommend Country Home of the best where 2 precious Poms can be happy and would be looked after for 6 weeks? Surrey preferred."—Morning Paper.
Think of their disgust at finding themselves boarded out in Sussex or Kent.
"Young Hungarian Lady with English and German knolidgement wants sob with English or American Organization."—Pester Lloyd.
Laugh and the world laughs with you ”