various contributors

“ You may see a thousand women with cloaks on, but how many will be really wearing them! As one criticised the cloaks and their wearers in the Enclosure at Aswood one couldn't help murmuring with a small sigh, "Who is sufficient for these things!" People who have the cloak fastened on in just any way, my dear, are simply begging the question; in its true inwardness, in its loftiest development, the cloak should be a separate creation, kept in its place only by the grace and knack of its wearer. ”

“ The Cloak, my Daphne, which is one of the most interesting arrivals in town this summer, is, a mon avis, something quite more than a garment—it is a great big test of all that a woman most prides herself on! ”

“ Sylvia is the offspring of one such family, and mated to the decadent heir of another. Her tragedy is that too late she meets a man whom she supposes capable of giving her the fuller, more complete life for which she has always ignorantly yearned. Then there is Anne, the penniless girl, hired as a child to be a play fellow for Sylvia, who herself loves the same man, and dies when his dawning affection is ruthlessly swept away from her by the dominant personality of Sylvia. ”

“ We drove quickly home.
As we neared the flat I suddenly remembered Algernon. I drew him out of my pocket, red and undraped. This would never do. If the porter saw me entering my residence with a nice lobster, the news would soon get about, and before I knew where I was I should have a super-tax form sprung on me. I placed the block of ice on the seat, took off its Morning Post, and wrapped up Algernon. Then I sprang out, gave the man a shilling, and got into the lift. ”

“ But when international issues are involved, and the win of a Canadian or American or German crew may cause The Daily Mail to declare (for the hundredth time) that England is played out, a man simply has to keep abreast of the results.
There are a score of other things. Name for me, if you can, the Great American Four, the hydro-aeroplane champion, the M.P. champion pigeon-flyer, and the motor-bike hill-climbing champion. ”

“ A tale, one might call it, of unhappy women; not made the less grim by the fact that the man for whom they fought is shown as wholly unworthy of such emotion. A powerful, disturbing and highly original story.
"Saki" has been now for a number of years a great delight to me, and his last work, Beasts and Super-Beasts (Lane) , is as good as any of its predecessors. Clothed in the elegant garments of Clovis or Reginald, Mr. Munro makes plain to us how lovely this world might be were we only a little bolder about our practical jokes. ”

“ Think of it—you may have to name the Champion Butter-fingers in 1915!
Come to tennis. You must know the names of the Australian Terror, the New Zealand Cyclone, the American Whirlwind. You must at a glance be able to pronounce on the nationality of Mavrogordato or Froitzheim. You have the strain of proving that the victory of a New Zealander over a German proves the vitality of the dear old country. ”

“ In the art of introducing bears into the boudoir of a countess or pigs into the study of a diplomat, and then clinching the matter with the wittiest of epigrams, Clovis is supreme. He knows, too, an immense amount about the vengeance that children may take upon their relations, and ladies upon their lady friends. I like him especially when he manoeuvres some stupid but kind-hearted woman into a situation of whose peril she herself is only cloudily aware, while the reader knows all about it. That is the fun of the whole thing. The reader is for ever assisting Clovis and Reginald ”

“ Frederick Palmer's success in achieving his purpose, which, obviously, was to conceive modern warfare as between two First-class Powers, firghting in the midst of civilisation, and to reduce it to terms of exact realism, showing the latest devices of destruction at work, but carefully excluding those improbable and impossible agencies which the more exuberant but less informed novelist loves to imagine and put in play. ”

“ Once upon a time there was a quiet respectable little spell-of-hot-weather, with no idea of being a nuisance or doing more than warm people up a bit, and make the summer really feel like summer, and add attraction to seaside resorts. ”

“ In this labour of love he found himself assisted by abstention of two groups of Ministerialists, one objecting to procedure on Finance Bill, the other thirsting for blood of the Ulster gun-runners.
If Premier still hesitates about Autumn Session this incident should help him to make up his mind. The Government will be safer with its Members on the moors or the golf links than daily running the gauntlet at Westminster.
House of Lords, Thursday.—When noble lords take their legislative business seriously in hand they show the Commons a better way. ”

“ Great satisfaction is felt in American golfing circles at the announcement that Mr. Olonzo Jaggers has decided to contest the Tantallon Division of Haddingtonshire. Mr. Jaggers, who has recently erected a tasteful chalet on the Bass Rock, has just issued his election address. The two main planks of his platform are the legalising of the Schenectady putter for all golf meetings, and of megaphones and mouth-organs in the House of Commons. ”

“ The practice of delivering set eulogies to the memory of the departed great is the most difficult that falls to the lot of a Leader on either side of House of Commons. In some hands it has uncontrollable tendency to the artificiality and insipidity of funeral baked meats. ”

“ Would you like to pay a round of visits to some delightful Shropshire houses, as the friend and guest of a charming woman, who knows all about what is most interesting in all of them, and has a pleasantly chatty manner of telling it? ”

“ But for the reflections of a cultivated woman, one who has steeped herself in the lore of a country she evidently loves, and can transcribe it with such tender and persuasive charm, there should always be room. ”

“ Janaway, who graduated in sociology at the University of Pensacola, and has recently been naturalised as a British subject, has brought with him a team of baseball players, four white and four coloured prize-fighters, and a chorus of variety artistes who will appear and sing at all his meetings. He is a powerful speaker with a great fund of anecdote, and his programme includes Compulsory Phonetic Spelling, the establishment of Christian Science, Electrocution, and the introduction of College Yells in Parliament. ”

“ The Pas de Six of Noah's Sons and their Wives! And the ensemble dancing of the Animals! My dearest, you positively must and shall leave your solitudes and come and see the Kamtchatkans in Scriptural opera-ballet! Only second to Noé is Le Femme de Lot, with dear Sarkavina, in clouds of white, doing a sensational whirling dance as she turns into the Pillar, while that amazing soprano, Scriemalona, sings the mysterious Salt Music. Bishops quite swarm at these performances. ”

“ My wife never draws any at all, knowing it is much safer where it is, and as for Albert, our only son, he takes no interest in the stuff. When we, in moments of self-denial, slip a coin into the slit of his money-box, he is merely bored, being as yet unable to unlock the box and get the coin out again, owing to ignorance of the whereabouts of the key. I explained all this to the telegraph boy, but his heart didn't soften ”

“ It reached 84; and the wise people who like warmth said, "How splendid! If only it would go on like this for ever! Not hotter—just like this."
But the sub-editors were not satisfied. They had got hold of a good thing and they meant to run it for all it was worth. So "Hotter than Ever" they sprawled across their papers, there still being nothing of real public interest to distract them, "Hotter To-morrow," "Heat-Wave Growing," "Terrible Heat."
And now the spell-of-hot-weather was stimulated to be really vicious. ”

“ We must decide to ignore all future championships... We must decline to be aggravated if a Japanese Badminton champion appears. We must cease to be interested if Britain's Hope beats the Horrible Peruvian at Tiddly-winks. ”

“ It is interesting to record that along the straight mile boarded by the shilling enclosure Mr. Tanquery McBrail, who had been playing with marvellously decorative effect, had his ball blown into the bunker at the tenth by the laughter of the less well-informed onlookers, while a regrettable incident was the contribution of several empty ginger-beer bottles to the natural difficulties of the hazard. ”

“ The fact that the links marshal had placed all the professional players present in one row of fauteuils, opposite the long carry to the 18th green, hardly seemed to further the interests of perfect golf. The warmest acknowledgments are therefore due to a number of ex-open champions, who kindly turned their backs on what proved one of the most distressing episodes in the day's play. ”

“ The "society" of a Northern manufacturing plutocracy, the display and rivalry, the marriages between the enriched families, the absence of any standard except wealth—all these things are set down with the minute realism that must come, I am sure, of intimate personal knowledge. ”

“ Everybody's charmed about it. Instead of going to lawyers when things run off the rails a little, if one just called in a colour-expert all sorts of horrors might be avoided, for he would prove that people are like that owing to the colours of their curtains and upholsteries, and aren't to blame themselves, poor dears, the very least little bit! The Thistledown ménage, for instance. For ages it's been tottery, because Thistledown never understood Fluffy, and Fluffy, poor little thing, seemed to understand everybody except Thistledown. ”

“ Whether or no the future will prove the truth of the author's somewhat Utopian conclusions, he certainly founds them upon a most exciting and convincing story, in which the "love interest" is as powerful as could be desired. ”

“ I looked at it closely.
"It's—it's a lobster," I said. "Didn't you say lobster?"
"I said ice."
"Oh," I said, "oh, I didn't understand. I thought you said lobster."
"You can't put lobster in cider cup," said Cilia severely.
Of course I quite see that. It was rather a silly mistake of mine. However, it 's pleasant to think that the taxi must have been nice and cool for the next man. ”

“ When I passed our butcher's on my way to the station yesterday morning, I noticed outside his shop a placard prominently displayed, which read:—"Williamson's Spring Lamb. So different from the ordinary butchers."
There was no apostrophe before the "s" in "butchers," so the reference was clearly to Williamson and not Williamson's Spring Lamb.
"Is Williamson really different from his rivals?" I said to myself, crossing to the other side of the road to take a general survey of the shop front. No, the same sort of joints seemed to be hanging up as those in other butchers' windows ”

“ T. says, if that's so, she 'd better have her own, own room done in some other colour, but Fluffy says, No, she likes pinky-bluey shades, only he must remember, when he's inclined to be hard on her, that the pinky-blueys are to blame and not herself.
Then there's old Lady Humguffin, easily the most miserly old dear who ever wore a transformation (she even has a taxi-meter thing in her own motors and anyone driving with her is expected to pay what it registers!) ”

“ According to La France Militaire the French Navy is about to try the experiment of enlisting black sailors. We should say that they will be found to make the most admirable stokers, not showing the dirt like the white men. ”

“ And even the people who like warmth began to grumble a little—hypnotised by the Press. But the spell-of-hot-weather had had enough. "I'll go somewhere else, where I'm really welcome and they don't have contents bills," it said, and it crossed the Channel to Paris. ”

“ Business done.—In the House of Lords le brave Willoughby de Broke was, if the phrase be Parliamentary, broken in the Division Lobby. Insisting on fighting the Home Rule Amending Bill to the last, he found himself supported by ten peers, a Liberal Ministry having for an important measure the majority, unparalleled in modern times, of 263. ”

“ Tuesday.—Interesting episode preceded main business of sitting. Sort of rehearsal of meeting of Parliament on College Green. Opened by Sheehan rising from Bench partially filled by O'Brienites to move issue of new writ for North Galway. Had it been an English borough nothing particular would have happened. Writ would have been ordered as matter of course, and there an end on't.
Things different on College Green. When Sheehan sat down, up gat Captain Donelan from Redmondite camp, which when moved to Dublin will, by reason of numerical majority, be analogous to Ministerialists at West-minister. ”

“ The tooth, as teeth will, had to be removed; the parents, as parents may, advanced a shilling upon it; and the godfather, as godfathers needn't, telegraphed to say he was coming forthwith to the locus in quo. Things were so when Mr. (I didn't catch your name, Sir," and I turned to the telegraph boy) "threatened to liquidate us unless his debt was satisfied. Business is, as he very properly remarked, business. Now for my suggestion: Albert," and I turned to him again, "will have the telegram, which being from his god-father, is rightly his. ”

“ Business done.—With assistance of Ministerial forces, O'Brienite motion for issue of writ for Galway defeated by Redmondite amendment to adjourn debate. William O'Brien took swift revenge. House dividing on Premier's motion allotting time for remaining stages of Budget Bill, he led his little flock into Opposition Lobby, assisting to reduce Ministerial majority to figure of 23. ”