Under the thick blanket of snow the outlaw town looked almost beautiful. It was wrong to consider it an outlaw town, he reflected, for it was anything but that. The good people always outnumbered the bad, only they made less noise and attracted less attention.
(from The Rustlers of West Fork, by Louis L'Amour)
Men of criminal instincts and aspirations are men born with and filled with suspicion. They live with the cherished idea that all men are out for their own interests. They judge others by themselves; hence, seeds of suspicion fall on fertile soil and easily flower into a lot of trouble.
(from The Rustlers of West Fork, by Louis L'Amour)
You no doubt know of Daniel Boone, and probably have heard of his older brother, Squire. What you might now know is that Squire's middle name was Maugridge, and that he was a "junior."
There are towns that are born hot from the ferment of hell, towns blasted into being on the edge of a cattle trail, the end of a railroad, or the site of a gold or silver strike. Not often do these towns last. They are like some evil plant startled into quick growth by the sin that spawns it, and dying when the price of the sin can no longer be paid. The West has known man such towns, and many a sun-blasted hillside preserves their foundations and ruined walls.
(from The Rustlers of West Fork, by Louis L'Amour)
"If a man says he can play a piano," he said quietly," you got to have a piano handy to prove he's a liar. If a man says he's a bronc peeler, you got to get him in the saddle to find out if he can back up his brag, but if a man walks like a fighter an' carries guns like a fighter, then all you got to do to find out if he's a windbag is start somethin'."
(from The Rustlers of West Fork, by Louis L'Amour)
"From Texas?"
"From a lot of places. what's on your mind, Goff? You opened, an' I called you. Now what have you got?"
Goff laughed. "Smart! he said, smiling. "I like that. Men who don't tll all they know are few and far between."
"When I was a boy," Hopalong said quietly, "I used to hear tht a fool's tongue was long enough to cut his throat."
(The Rustlers of West Fork, by Louis L'Amour)
Hitherto, I should mention, my nephew's poetry, for he belonged to the modern fearless school, had always been stark and rhymeless and had dealt principally with corpses and the smell of cooking cabbage.
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
His mood was Hamlet-like - wavering, irresolute. Reason told him that this thing had got to be done: but, as he told Reason, nobody was going to make him like it.
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Seems to me ou've told us about your nephew Archibald before. Was he the one who had the trouble with the explorer?"
"That was Osbert."
"The one who stammered?"
"No. That was George."
"You seem to have so many nephews."
"I have been singularly blessed in that respect," agreed Mr. Mulliner. "But, as regards Archibald, it may serve to recall him to you if I mention that he was generally considered to be London's leading exponent of the art of imitating a hen laying an egg."
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"She'll give you the devil when you get back," [Pongo] said, with not a little relish. I wouldn't be in your shoes for something. When you tell Aunt Jane," he said, with confidence, for he knw his Aunt Jame's emotional nature, "that you slipped her entire roll to a girl, and explain, as you will have to explain, that she was an extraordinarily pretty girl - a girl, in fine, who looked like something out of a beauty chorus of the better sort, I should think she would pluck down one of the ancestral battle-axes from the wall and jolly well strike you on the mazzard."
"Have no anxiety, my dear boy," said Lord Ickenham. "It is like your kind heart to be so concerned, but have no anxiety. I shall tell her that I was compelled to give the money to you to enable you to buy back some compromising letters from a Spanish demi-mondaine. She will scarcely be able to blame me for rescuing a fondly-loved nephew from the clutches of an adventuress. It may be that she will feel a little vexed with you for a while, and that you may have to allow a certain time to elapse before you visit Ickenham again, but then I shan't be wanting you at Ickenham till the ratting season starts, so all is well."
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Ah," said Lord Ickenham. "The vet wishes to speak to me. Yes, vet?" This seemed to puzzle the cerise bloke a bit.
"I thought you said this chap was your son."
"If I had a son," said Lord Ickenham, a little hurt, "he would be a good deal better-looking than that. No, this is the local veterinary surgeon. I may have said I looked on him as a son. Perhaps that was what confused you."
He shifted across to Pongo and twiddled his hands enquiringly. Pongo gaped at him, and it was not until one of the hands caught him smartly in the lower reps that he remembered he was deaf and started to twiddle back. Considering that he wasn't supposed to be dumb, I can't see why he should have twiddled, but no doubt there are moments when twiddling is about all a fellow feels himself equal to. For what seemed to him at least ten hours Pongo had been undergoing great mental stress, and one can't blame him for not being chatty. Anyway, be that as it may, he twiddled.
"I cannot quite understand what he says," announced Lord Ickenham at length, "because he sprained a finger this morning and that makes him stammer. But I gather he wishes to have a word with me in private. Possibly my parrot has got something the matter with it which he is reluctdant to mention even in sign language in front of a young unmarried girl. You know what parrots are. We will step outside."
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"And when Henry Parker had all that fuss with the bank it was touch and go they didn't send him to prison. Between ourselves, Connie, has a bank official, even a brother of your husband, any right to sneak fifty pounds from the till in order to put it on a hundred to one shot for the Grand National? Not quite playing the game, Connie. Not the straight bat. Henry, I grant you, won five thousand of the best and never looked back afterwards, but, though we applaud his judgment of form, we must surely look askance at his financial methods."
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Now, Freddie's views on babies are well defined. He is prepared to cope with them singly, if all avenues of escape are blocked and there is a nurse or mother standing by to lend air in case of sudden hiccoughs, retchings, or nauseas. Under such conditions he has even been known to offer his watch to one related by ties of blood in order that the little stranger might listen to the tick-tock. But it would be paltering with the truth to say that he likes babies. They give him, he says, a sort of grey feeling. He resents their cold stare and the supercilious and up-stage way in which they dribble out the corner of their mouths on seeing him. Eyeing them, he is conscious of doubts as to whether Man can really be Nature's last word.
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Whatever is the matter, Mortimer?"
"Let me get at the man who hit me in the eye with a cat."
"A cat?" Lady Prenderby's voice sounded perplexed. "Are you sure?"
"Sure? What do you mean sure? Of course I'm sure. I was just dropping off to sleep in my hammock, when suddenly a great beastly cat came whizzing through the air and caught me properly in the eyeball. It's a nice thing. A man can't sleep in hammocks in his own garden without people pelting him with cats. I insist on the blood of the man who threw that cat."
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
He realized that he had a lot of tense thinking to do, and to assist thought he sat down on the bed. Or, to be accurate, on the dead cat which was lying on the bed. It was this cat which the Alsatian had been licking just before the final breach in his relations with Freddie - the object, if you remember, which the later had supposed to be a cushion.
He leaped up as if the corpse, instead of being cold, had been piping hot. He stared down, hoping against hope that the animal was merely in some sort of coma. But a glance told him that it had made the great change. He had never seen a deader cat. After life's fitful fever it slept well.
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I met Dahlia Prenderby once," said the Egg. "I thought she seemed a nice girl."
"Freddie thought so, too. He loved her madly."
"And lost her, of course?"
"Absolutely."
"Do you know," said a thoughtful Bean, "I'll bet that if all the girls Freddie Widgeon has loved and lost were placed end to end - not that I suppose one could do it - they would reach half-way down Piccadilly."
"Further than that," said the Egg. "Some of them were pretty tall. What beats me is why he ever bothers to love them. They always turn him down in the end. He might just as well never begin. Better, in fact, because in the time saved he could be reading some good book."
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"She said you had in herited the Mulberry Tree, and she wanted you to run it as a going concern."
"That's right. We've been arguing about it for weeks."
"I must say I agree with her that you ought to have a pop at it. There's gold in them thar hills, Blister. You might clean up big as a jolly innkeeper. And as for giving up your art - well, why not? It's obviously lousy."
"I feel that, now that I've had time to think it over. Seeing her leg it like that sort of opened my eyes. Have you ever seen the girl you love sprinting away from you having hysterics?"
"No, now you mention it, I can't say I have. I've known Aggie to throw her weight about on occasion, but always in a fairly static manner. Unpleasant, I should imagine."
"It does something to you, Freddie. It makes you realize that you've been a brute and a cad and a swine."
(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
There was something about the girl's exquisite petiteness and fragility that appealed to Nelson Cork's depths. After having wasted so much time looking at a female Carnera like Diana Punter, it was a genuine treat to him to be privileged to feast the eyes on one so small and dainty. And, what with one thing and another, he found the most extraordinary difficulty in lugging Percy into the conversation.
They strolled along, chattaing. And, mark you, Elizabeth Bottsworth is a girl a fellow could chat with without getting a crick in the neck from goggling up at her, the way you had to do when you took the air with Diana Punter. Nelson realized now that talking to Diana Punter had been like trying to exchange thoughts with a flag-pole sitter.
(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Maiden Eggesford, like so many of our rural hamlets, is not at its best and brightest on a Sunday. When you have walked down the main street and looked at the Jubilee Watering-Trough, there is nothing much to do except go home and then come out again and walk down the main street one more and take another look at the Jubilee Watering-Trough.
Sanders played his entire professional career with the Boston Celtics. He played in the NBA Finals eight times, and won eight times. He is one of three players to have done that. After he retired, he served as head coach at Harvard for four seasons, the first black head coach at an Ivy League school.
Well, I take it that when a man comes to die, love is more to him than a kingdom: it may be, if we could see truly, that it is more to him even while he lives.
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
"Lad," he said, "don't say 'No!' Here's the finest lady alive sick for her lover, and the finest country in the world sick for its true king, and the best friends - aye, by Heaven, the best friends - man ever had, sick to call you master. I know nothing about your conscience, but this I know: the King's dead, and the place is empty; and I don't see what Almighty God sent you here for unless it was to fill it. Come, lad - for our love and her honour! While he was alive I'd have killed you sooner than let you take it. He's dead. Now - for our love and her honour, lad!"
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
In his novel, Rupert of Hentzau, Anthony Hope makes reference to "a brown wideawake hat." This is a broad brimmed countryman's hat with a low crown, similar to a "slouch hat."
In moments of excitement and intense feeling a man makes light of obstacles which look large enough as he turns reflective eyes on them in the quiet of after days.
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
It is strange, yet certain, that the zenith of courage and the acme of villainy can both be bought for the price of a lady's glove; among such outcasts as those from whom Bauer drew his recruits the murder of a man is held serious only when the police are by, and death at the hands of him they seek to kill is no more than an everyday risk of their employment.
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
Helga never will admit that she is clever, yet I find she discovers from me what she wants to know, and I suspect hides successfully the small matters of which she in her wifely discretion deems I had best remain ignorant.
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
We find this word in the novel Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope. It means "a financial inducement, gratuity, or bribe."
Our fears defeated common sense, and our conjectures outran possibility. Sapt was the first to recover from this foolish mood, and he rated us soundly, not sparing even the Queen herself. With a laugh we regained some of our equanimity, and felt rather ashamed of our weakness
(from Rupert of Hentsau, by Anthony Hope)
Marla Landi was another actress who married into the realm of bluebloods. She was Lady Dashwood after her marriage to Sir Francis Dashwood, 11th Baronet, in 1977. The first Sir Francis was a British merchant, landowner and politician who sat in the house of Commons and was knighted in 1707.
I looked full in her eyes; she met mine with a blinking imperturbability. There is no face so inscrutable as a clever old woman's when she is on her guard.
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
Sapt attended her to the door, set a sentry at the end of the pssage with orders that Her Majesty should on no pretence be disturbed, promised her very audibly to return as soon as he possibly could, and respectfully closed the door after she had entered. The Constable was well aware of the value in a secret business of doing openly all that can safely be done with openness.
(Magicians use the same principle of obscuring one movement by making another very visible.)
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
At one o'clock Colonel Sapt came out. "Go to bed till six," said he to Bernenstein.
"I am not sleepy."
"No, but you will be at eight if you don't sleep now."
"Is the Queen coming out, Colonel?"
"In a minute, Lieutenant."
"I should like to kiss her hand."
"Well, if you think it worth waiting a quarter of an hour for," said Sapt, with a slight smile.
"You said a minute, sir."
"So did she," answered the Constable.
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
There was a moment's silence; Rudolf drew his shirt over his head and tucked it into his trousers. "Give me the jacket and waistcoat," he said. "I feel deuced damp underneath, though."
"You'll soon get dry," grinned Sapt. "You'll be kept moving, you see."
"I've lost my hat."
"Seems to me you've lost your head, too."
"You'll find me both, eh, Sapt?"
"As good as your own, anyhow," growled the Constable.
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
Now when a man suspects danger, let him not spend his time in asking whether there be really danger, or in upbraiding himself for timidity, but let him face his cowardice and act as though the danger were real.
(from Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope)
"It is not enough, Fritz, to have no women in a house, though brother Michael shows some wisdom there. If you want safety, you must have non within fifty miles."
(from The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope)
She was a "B" movie actress that you probably never heard of. However, if you have children, you probably have seen her on television. Disorder in the Court is one of the most famous of the Three Stooges films. In it, Karen is asked by the court to demonstrate the dance she does at a night club, where the Stooges are musicians. Hardly anyone knows her name, but almost everyone recognizes Kaaren because of that one slapstick movie short.
For my part, if a man must needs be a knave, I would have him a debonair knave, and I liked Rupert Hentzau better than his long-faced, close-eyed companions. It makes your sin no worse, as I conceive, to do it a la mode and stylishly.
(from The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope)
Ah, but a man cannot be held to write down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm his brain when an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them. Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was vouchsafed to him, than in fretting over wicked impulses which come unsought and extort an unwilling hospitality from the weakness of our nature.
(from The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope)
I came across this implement in The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope. The bull’s-eye lantern, with one or more sides of bulging glass, was in popular use from the early 18th century, similar devices having been made at least as early as the 13th century. Dark until it was suddenly switched on by opening its door, it focused its light to some extent and served the purpose of the modern flashlight. I cannot get an image to copy, but you can look it up.
"We must bury that poor fellow," said I.
"No time," said Sapt.
"I'll do it."
"Hang you!" he grinned. "I make you a king, and - Well, do it. Go and fetch him, while I look to the horses. He can't lie very deep, but I doubt if he'll care about it."
(from The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope)
"Poor kid," he said. This, then, was at the back of Marjorie's mysterious hints, and those scratchat sneers of Naomi Rushworth's. The girl had wanted love affairs, that was certain; imagined them perhaps. There had been Ambrose Ledbury. Between the normal and the abnormal, the gulf is deep, but so narrow that misrepresentation is made easy.
(From The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Can you imagine what a "scratchcat sneer" would look like?)
"Some things are so beastly."
"Oh, yet - quite a lot of things. Birth is beastly - and death - and digestion, if it comes to that. Sometimes when I think of what's happening inside me to a beautiful supreme de sole, with the caviare in boat, and the croutons and the jolly little twists of potato and all the gadgets - I could cry. But there it is, don't you know."
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"I wash my hands of this case, Charles. There's nothing for me to do now you have come into it. It bores and annoys me. Let's talk about something else."
Wimsey might wash his hands, but, like Pontius Pilate, he found society irrationally determined to connect him with an irritating and unsatisfactory case. At midnight the telephone bell rang. He had just gon to bed, and cursed it.
"Tell them I'm out," he shouted to Bunter, and cursed again on hearing the man assure the unknown caller that he would see whether his lordship had returned. Disobedience in Bunter spelt urgent neessity.
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
You might not know that Dog, the canine star of Petticoat Junction and of the movie Benji were played by a pooch named Higgins. After Higgins died, his daughter Benjean took over the role in the movie For the Love of Benji. Also, Higgins' son, named Mac, played the dog Tramp on the My Three Sons television series.
Dave Odom was a successful college basketball coach. His teams won 406 games during his tenures at the head of the East Carolina, Wake Forest and South Carolina programs. He took teams to the NCAA tournament nine times, including a run to the Elite Eight at Wake in 1996.
And while he might not consider it a compliment, Odom was one of the most successful coaches in history in the NIT. The NIT in the early years of college basketball was considered THE tournament, but eventually surrendered the spotlight to the NCAA, and became the "also ran" tournament for teams that did not make the Big Dance.
When you consider that teams do not "aim" to make the NIT, and that it is virtually impossible to predict who will be there, since they did not get to issue their invitations until the NCAA got through, having consistent success in the NIT is a very "iffy" proposition. Most major conference programs would consider it a let-down to have to go to the NIT when they were hoping for the NCAA, so it is difficult to get the team motivated for the secondary tournament.
However, Odom seemed to have had that knack for getting teams up for the NIT. He won the championship once at Wake Forest and twice at South Carolina, plus an additional runner-up spot at SC. Not many coaches, if any, can point to more success in the NIT.
Apparently Ann Dorland had not the knack of inspiring passionate devotion. "Not a very lively house, is it, for a young girl like yourself?"
"Dull as ditchwater," agreed Nellie, frankly. "Miss Dorland would have what they call studio parties sometimse, but not at all smart and nearly all young ladies - artists and such-like."
(From The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Needless to say, the quote above raises the important question for discussion: Just how dull is ditchwater?)
At one point in the novel Rupert of Hentzau, a dead boarhound plays a key role. Any of us who watched Hogan's Heroes knows that "schweinhund" is an insult to Germans, being translated "pig dog." I wonder if the boarhound of the novel is the same as the schweinhund? Among the historical uses of Great Danes was boar hunting.
Wimsey said that he thought both parties were heartily to be congratulated. And indeed, from what he had seen of Naomi Rushworth, he felt that she at least deserved congratulation, for she was a singularly plain girl, with a face like a weasel.
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
The "ceremony" took place, as such ceremonies do, under the discreet cover of darkness. George Fentiman, who in Robert's absence, attended to represent the family was nervous and depressed. It is trying enough to go to the funeral of one's friends and relations, amid the grotesque pomps of glass hearses and black horses, and wreaths, and appropriate hymns "beautifully" rendered by well-paid choristers, but, as George irritably remarked, the people who grumble over funerals don't realize their luck. However depressing the thud of earth on the coffin-lid may be, it is music compared to the rattle of gravel and thump of spades which herald a pre-mature and unreverend resurrection, enveloped in clouds of formalin and without benefit of clergy.
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"I am now free to devote my invaluable attention to your concerns. What is the news? And who is in love and with whom?
"Oh, life is a perfect desert. Nobody is in love with me, and the Schlitzers have had a worse row than usual and separated."
"No!"
"Yes. Only, owing to financial considerations, they've got to go on sharing the same studio = you know, that big room over the mews. It must be very awkward having to eat and sleep and work in the same room with somebody you're being separated from. They don't even speak, and it's very awkward when you cann on one of them and th other has to pretend not to be able to see or hear you."
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"Not very helpful," said Wimsey. "D'you know, occasionally I think there's quite a lot to be said for women."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Well, I mean, all this crazy, uninquisitive way men have of makin' casual acquaintances is very fine and admirable and all that - but look how inconvenient it is! Here you are. You admit you've met this bloke two or three times, and all you know about him is that he is tall and thin and retired into some unspecified suburb. A woman, with the same opportunities, would have found out his address and occupation, whether he was married, how many children he had, with their names and what they did for a living, what his favorite author was, what food he liked best, the name of his tailor, dentist and bootmaker, when he knew your grandfather and what he thought of him - screeds of useful stuff!"
"So she would," said Fentiman, with a grin. "That's why I've never married."
(From The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. By the way, that word "screeds" above is correct. Look it up.)
"A new notebook, please, Bunter. Head it "Fentiman" and be ready to come round with me to the Bellona Club tomorrow, complete with camera and the rest of your outfit."
"Very good, my lord. I take it your lordship has a new inquiry in hand?"
"Yes Bunter - quite new."
"May I venture to ask if it is a promising case, my lord?"
"It has its points. So has a porcupine. No matter. Begone, dull care! Be at great pains, Bunter, to cultivate a detached outlook on life. Take example by the bloodhound, who will follow up with equal and impartial zest the trail of a parricide or of a bottle of aniseed."
"I will bear it in mind, my lord."
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club," by Dorothy L. Sayers)
British readers of this time (1894) liked their heroes to be proper gentlemen. A proper gentleman was not a paid professional. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, for example, is not a professional detective, but an amateur. Professionalism implied vularity to Conan Doyle's and Anthony Hope's audiences. The amateur hero was above the pedestrian middle-class concerns of income. The amateur hero was of the noble class, not the laboring class. And the amateur hero, such as Rudolf Rassendyll, worked more for the mere thrill of adventure, or for the love of accomplishment, or for the requirements of city, or for protecting a higher understanding of justice and righteousness.
(From Gary Hoppenstand's introduction to The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope)
"Twelve thousand pounds were to go to Miss Ann Dorland. The whole of the remainder was to pass to her brother, General Fentiman, if he was still living at her death. If, on the other hand, he should pre-decease her, the conditions were reversed. In that case, the bulk of the money came to Miss Dorland, and fifteen thousand pounds were to be equally divided between Major Robert Fentiman and his brother George."
Wimsey whistled softly.
"I quite agree with you," said Mr. Murbles. "It is a most awkward situation. Lady Dormer died at precisely 10:37 A.M. on November 11th. General Fentiman died that same morning at some time, presumably after 10 o'clock, which was his usual hour for arriving at the Club, and certainly beore 7 P.M. when his death was discovered. If he died immediately on his arrival, or at any time up to 10:36, then Miss Dorland is an important heiress., and my clients the Fentimans get only seven thousand pounds or so apiece. If, on the other hand, his death occurred even a few seconds after 10:37, Miss Dorland receives only twelve thousand pounds, George Fentiman is left with the small pittance bequeathed to him under his father's will - while Robert Fentiman, the residuary legatee, inherits a very consideraable fortune of well over half a million."
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers) The situation is a tight one. A fortune rests upon a matter of minutes, or even seconds. Surely a thorny problem for any sleuth. Is Lord Peter Wimsey up to it? Surely you jest!
A man who is by nature a light baritone cannot conduct a conversation for any length of time in deep bass without acquiring a parched and burning throat. Monty came out of the booth eeling as if his had been roughly sandpapered, and the thought of that two anda half mile walk back to the Castle and its little brother, the two and a half mile walk back, intimidated him. The more he thought of it, the less worth while did it seem to him to go to all that fearful sweat simply in order to see the scruff of Lord Tilbury's neck grasped by a pig-man. Far better, he felt to toddle along to the bar-parlour and there, over a soothing tankard, follow the scene with the eye of imagination.
(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
There was a pause. The heavy breathing that came through the window could only be that of a parsimonious man occupied in writing a checque for a thousand pounds. It is a type of breathing which it is impossible to mistake, though in some respects it closely resembles the sound of a strong man's death agony.
(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Lord Tilbury was feeling dismally that he might have expected this. He saw now how foolish he had been to place so delicate a commission in the hands of a popinjay. Of all classes of the community, popinjays, when it comes to carryout out delicate commissions, are the most inept. Search History's pages from end to end, reflected Lord Tilbury, and you will not find one instance of a popinjay doing anything successfully except eat, sleep, and master the new dance steps.
(From Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The Hon. Galahad Threepwood, in his fifty-seventh year, was a dapper little gentleman on whose grey but still thickly covered head the weight of a consistently misspent life rested lightly. His flannel suit sat jauntily upon his wiry frame, a black-rimmed monocle gleamed jauntily in his eye. Everything about this Musketeer of the nineties was jaunty. It was a standing mystery to all who knew him that one who had had such an extraordinarily good time all his life should, in the evening of that life, be so superbly robust. Wan contemporaries who had once painted a gas-lit London red in his company and were now doomed to an existence of dry toast, Vichy water, and German cure resorts felt very strongly on this point. A man of his antecedents, they considered, ought by rights to be rounding off his career in a bath-chair instead of flitting about the place, still chaffing head waiters as of old and calling for the wine list without a tremor.
(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Lord Emsworth, as his custom was, had pottered off there directly after breakfast, and now, at half past twelve, he was still standing, in company with his pig-man Pirbright, draped bonelessly over the rail of the sty, his mild eyes beaming with the light of a holy devotion.
From time to time he sniffed sensuously. Elsewhere throughout this fair domain the air was fragrant wit hthe myriad scents of high summer, but not where Lord Emsworth was doing his sniffing. Within a libereal radius of the Empress's headquarters other scents could not compete. This splendid animal diffused an aroma which was both distinctive and interesting. Attractive, too, if you liked that sort of thing, as Lord Emsworth did.
(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Fentiman laughed, and ground out the offending cigarette stub on the nearest ash-tray. "I wonder anybody cares to know you," he said. The strain and bitterness had left his voice and he sounded merely amused.
"They wouldn't," said Wimsey, "only they think I'm too well-off to have any brains. It's like hearing that the Earl of Somewhere is taking a leading part in a play. Everybody takes it for granted he must act rottenly. I'll tell you my secret. All my criminological investigations are done for me by a 'ghost' at three pounds a week, while I get the headlines and frivol with well-known journalists at the Savoy."
"I find you refreshing, Wimsey," said Fentiman, languidly. "You're not in the least witty but you have a kind of obvious facetiousness which reminds me of the less exacting class of music hall."
(from The Unpleseantness in the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
Don Wilson, longtime announcer for the Jack Benny program, was married for seven years to Polish countess Marusia Radunska. Given that Wilson was a very robust gentleman whose girth was a running joke on the program, one wonders concerning the proportions of his noble lady.
"What in the world, Wimsey, are you doing in this Morgue?" demanded Captain Fentiman, flinging aside the "Evening Banner" with the air of a man released from an irksome duty.
"Oh, I wouldn't call it that," retorted Wimsey, amiably. "Funeral Parlor at the very least. Look at the marble. Look at the furnishings. Look at the palms and the chaste brone nude in the corner."
"Yes, and look at the corpses. Place always reminds me of that old thing in 'Punch,' you know - 'Walter, take away Lord Whatisname, he's been dead two days.' Look at Old Ormsby there, snoring like a hippopotamus. Look at my revered grandpa - dodders in here at ten every morning, collects the 'Morning Post' and the armchair by the fire, and become part of the furniture till the evening."
(from The Unpleasantness in the Bellona Club, by Dorothy Sayers)
When, some months before, the news had got about that the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, brother of the Earl of Emsworth and as sprightly an old gentleman as was ever thrown out of a Victorian music-hall, was engaged in writing the recollections of his colourful career as a man about town in the nineties, the shock to the many now highly respectable members of the governing classes who in their hot youth had shared it was severe. All over the country decorous Dukes and steady Viscounts, who had once sown wild oats in the society of the young Galahad, sat quivering in their slippers at the thought of what long-cupboarded skeletons those Reminiscences might disclose.
They knew their Gally, and their imagination allowed them to picture with a crystal clearness the sort of book he would be likely to produce. It would, they felt in their ageing bones, be essentially one of those of which the critics say, "A veritable storehouse of diverting anecdote."
(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Who is he?"
"An uncle of mine."
"But he seemed respectable."
"That is to say, a step-uncle. Or would you call him step-step? He married my late step-mother's step-sister. I'm not half sure," said Ukridge, pondering, "that step-step wouldn't be the correct description."
These were deep waters, into which I was not prepared to plunge.
(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Who were the best college coaches of big men? That is hard to answer, for there have been many good ones. However, it would be hard to argue against John Thompson and John Wooden. Sure, both had big men with exceptional natural talent, but the point is that they knew what to do with that talent, and made good players better.
Thompson coached Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning, to name probably the most famous of his stable. Wooden had Lew Alcindor (the greatest of them all), Bill Walton, and Swen Nater, to name just three. All of them went on to be NBA stars.
What is interesting is that Thompson was himself an accomplished post player, but Wooden was small - but still was able to teach players to play in the post.
His footsteps died away, and there was silence in the quiet garden. Both Anselm and Myrtle were busy with their thoughts. Once more through Anselm's mind there was racing that pithy address which the coach of his college boat had delivered when trying to do justice to the spectacle of Number Five's obtrusive stomach; while Myrtle, on her ide, was endeavouring not to give utterance to a rough tanslation of something she had once heard a French taxi driver say to a gendarme during her finishing school days in Paris.
(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Orlando Radhames Antigua Fernández is a coach and basketball player born in the Dominican Republic. He is notable for a couple of things. He was raised in the Bronx and on Halloween night he was the victim of a drive-by shooting and had a bullet lodged in his head near his left eye. Doctors were unable to remove the slug. He started playing ball again in two months.
Antigua's basketball play was good enough to earn him a scholarship to Pitt, and after he graduated from there in 1995, he became the first non-black player on the Harlem Globetrotters' roster since Bob Karstens in 1943. He was the head coach at South Florida for three seasons, and is now an assistant at Illinois.
"You must take care of it. Don't leave it lying about. We don't want somebody pinching it."
A look of pain passed over Anselm's spiritual face. "You are not suggesting that the vicar would stoop to such an act?"
"I was thinking more," said Myrtle, "of Joe Beamish."
She was alluding to a member of her loved one's little flock who had at one time been a fairly prosperous burglar. Seeing the light after about sixteen prison sentences, he had given up his lifework and now raised vegetables and sang in the choir
(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
All he wanted was to place child and self on a sound financial footing, and as he reached Oofy's flat and pressed the bell, he was convinced that the thing was in the bag.
In a less sanguine frame of mind, he might have been discouraged by the fact that the infant was looking more than ever like some mass-assassin who has been blackballed by the Devil's Island Social and Outing Club as unfit to associate with the members; but his experience with Charles Pikelet and the policeman had shown him that this was how all babies of that age looked, and he had no reason to suppose tha the one in "Tiny Fingers" had been any different The only thing Mrs. Bingo had stressed about the latter had been its pink toes, and no doubt Algernon, Aubrey, if called upon to do so, could swing as pink a toe as the next child.
(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Between Bingo and Mrs. Bingo there existed an almost perfect love. From the very inception of their union, they had been like ham and eggs. But he doubted whether the most Grade A affection could stand up against the revelation of what he had done this day. Look at his story from whatever angle you pleased, it remained one that reflected little credit on a young father and at the best must inevitably lead to, "Oh, how could you?" And the whole wheeze in married life, he had come to learn, was to give the opposite number as few opportunities of saying, "Oh, how could you?" as possible.
(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Introduced to the child in the nursing home, he recoiled with a startled "Oi!" and as the days went by the feeling that he had run up against something red-hot had in no way diminished. The only thing that prevented a father's love from faltering was the fact that there was in his possession a photograph of himself at the same early age, in which he, too, looked like a homocidal fried egg. This proof that it was possible for a child, in spite of a rocky start, to turn eventually into a suave and polished boulevardier with finely chiselled features heartened him a good deal, causing him to hope for the best.
(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Everything here is soggy. My yard will be knee-deep before I get it mowed. My roof is leaking. I can only imagine what the folks in Noah's day felt like.
He felt something pawing at his sleeve. He glanced round, and there was Purkiss with a pleading look in his eyes, like a spaniel trying to ingratiate itelf with someone whom it knows to be allergic to dogs.
(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
As he passed into the Little domain, he was feeling in some respects like a murderer who has at last succeeded in getting rid of the body and in other respects like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego on emerging rom the burning fiery furnace. It was as if a great load had been lifted from him. Once, he tells me, in the days of his boyhood, while enjoying a game of football at school, he was compelled in pursuance of his duties to fall on the ball and immediately afterwards became the base of a sort of pyramid consisting of himself and eight beefy members of the opposing team with sharp elbows and cleated boots. Even after all these years, he says, he can still recall the sense of buoyancy and relief when this mass of humanity eventually removed itself from the small of his back.
(from Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Bingo," said Mrs. Bingo, we always tell each other everything, don't we?"
"Do we? Oh, yes. Yes."
"Because when we got married, we decided that that was the only way. I remember your saying so on the honeymoon."
"Yes," said Bingo, licking his lips and marvelling at the depths of fatheadness to which men can sink on their honeymoons."
(from Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I'll tell the management that he's wanted for an urgent business matter, so as not to make unpleasantness."
"They won't like it."
"Then they'll have to lump it."
(from The Unpleasantness in the Bellona Club, by Dorothy Sayers)
This passage is interesting to me because of the expression "lump it." In my youth it was common to hear, "If you don't like it, lump it," I assumed that was a coinage of my generation. However, this novel was copyrighted in 1928, which means that this particular slang expression dates back at least to the Flapper Era.
Bingo, you see, is not a man who finds it easy to float a really substantial loan. People know too much about his financial outlook. He will have it in sackfuls some day, of course, but until he realizes on his Uncle Wilberforce - who is eighty-six and may quite easily go to par - the wolf, so far as he is concerned, will always be in or about the vestibule. The public is aware of this, and it makes the market sluggish.
(from Eggs, Bean and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Not even their most ardent admirers would content that the Virginia Cavaliers get the best basketball talent in their recruiting efforts. They are far from the upper echelon of the one-and-done rent-a-title sorts like Kentucky and Duke. But Coach Tony Bennett does a marvelous job of recruiting to fit his system, and of teaching his system to his players. And since he is not getting five-star talent, his players are more likely to stay around for three or four years, so he gets a lot more mileage out of his recruiting.
Their accomplishments (the 1996-97 Wisconsin Badgers basketball team), going 18-10 and making it to the NCAA tournament, were even more impressive when put into historical perspective. With their eighteen regular-season victories, they equalled the total of the 1915-16 squad, the only other team to achieve that many wins in nearly one hundred years of basketball at Wisconsin. In addition, the eleven conference victories were the highest total since the 1941 national championship season.
(from A Season with Coach Dick Bennett, by Eric Ferris)
Upon Winterstein's departure, Bennett noted, "This is one of those ocasions where the right thing to do is not the best thing to do. By my personal code, there is an obligation to do the right thing. This my call, and nothing should change my standards. If I value winning over doing the right thing, then the decision is easy enough to make. We offer Shaddrick the scholarship. But if I value doing the right thing over winning, though I wish to win, the decision is not complicated, it is just hard to make."
(from A Season with Coach Dick Bennett, by Eric Ferris)
It did not take long for Bennett's own thankfulness to be tested. Shawn Hood informed him that Sam would be showing up for the game with a tattoo. Shaking his head slowly, he furrowed his brow, squinted his eyes and whispered, "What? He is getting a tattoo?" Shawn laughed at Bennett's response and added, "Yeah, he is getting a cross and the Bible passage Isaiah 40:31 tattooed on his right shoulder."
Bennett's reaction was tempered by the fact that he had given Okey the passage. "He loves that one. I gave that to him." He then smiled and shook his head in disbelief. "The Lord does not need to be glorified in that way."
(from A Season with Coach Dick Bennett, by Eric Ferris)
"How do people get close to you, develop an intimate relationship?" I continued.
He shook his head as he answered. "They don't, I guess. I'm of the opinion that you develop many acquaintances, but in reality, it is your family and a few people whom you have known forever that you remain really close to. I don't have the need to seek intimate relationships, because I have my wife, my family, dear old friends and my faith. If I had any more, I would be spreading myself too thin."
(from A Season with Coach Dick Bennett, by Eric Ferris)
"You play good basketball in one of two ways. One, you have very good players who go out and play very hard. Or two you have guys who are limited but are very smart. Of course there is a lot of crossover and players are on continuum between the two extremes. But the fact is we are not getting any better, so we have to get smarter. That is our problem. We aren't going to get any smarter with the kids we are currently playing. Some of them are just never going to be smart players; it is not in them; they aren't going to change. Once you start thinking for your players, it is the beginning of the end."
(from A Season with Coach Dick Bennett, by Eric Ferris)
He once again sat back and sighed heavily. "I am working very hard to keep the Lord first in my life. That has been a lifetime struggle, but it has become more dramatic in the last five to ten years. I battle that constantly and it is never far from my consciousness. My faith is real to me and I want to keep my priorities straight, but I have been so conditioned to this competitive world that I have terrible conflicts. I have let my competitive nature overrun my Christianity way too much. I know it is improper to swear, nag players, get after referees, or worse, lose my temper. In my desire to be competitive I step over the line. That is the battle. I have lost the battle numerous times, but I am still determined to win the war."
(from A Season with Coach Dick Bennett, by Eric Ferris)
Some women have a warm appealing beauty. There are others who are just as undeniably beautiful, but their appearance has an edge to it that robs it of warmth.
Such were two sisters who were active beginning in the 1940s. Constance Dowling and her younger sister, Doris, were lovely ladies, but there just was no softness in their expressions, which is interesting since they were indeed sisters. Maybe it was genetic. Maybe it was environmental. But for whatever reason, it was there.
Bennett's admiration of hard work and "paying the price" carried over to his players as well. "I really had to earn everything I got, and rightfully so, and that's affected my dealings with players. I am hard on them until they prove they can play and earn my respect. If guy is highly touted, I am not real quick to share that opinion until I see it."
(from A Season with Coach Dick Bennett, by Eric Ferris)
A great defender communicates well with his teammates, while the poor defender rarely talks. The contrast is obvious, and the reason is quite simple. The poor defender has a difficult time communicating on defense because he does not have a sense of what is about to happen next. He lacks the ability to anticipate the movement of the offense. As a result, he is always one step behind the offense and in a perpetual state of catch-up. This makes it impossible for him to have the presence of mind to communicate with his teammates. A player with this limitation may be a great one-on-one defender, but he simply cannot be a great team defender.
(from A Season with Coach Dick Bennett, by Eric Ferris)
Divorce, gambling, prostitution. What state is famous for those three things? Nevada, of course. Can you imagine living in a state like that?
