When Lottie arrived at the office, Epperman lighted a gas-lamp. She was a mighty fine-looking woman, but cold, Epperman thought. He had seen her kind before - the ones who handled men the best because they lacked passion themselves. They were always thinking while a man was merely feeling.
(from Flint, by Louis L'Amour)
"Every youngster wants to be grown-up," her father had said, "but the difference between a child and an adult is not years, rather it's a willingness to accept responsibility, to be responsible for one's own actions."
(from Flint, by Louis L'Amour)
"I take it you're hunting somebody, but with all that noise he's probably hidden so well you couldn't find him anyway. You act like a lot of brinless tenderfeet."
"That's hard talk, for a stranger."
"There's nothing strange about this shotgun. It can get almighty familiar."
(from Flint, by Louis L'Amour)
"You are going into a hard world. Remember this: honor is most important, that, and a good name. Keep your self-respect."
(from Flint, by Louis L'Amour)
He stood watching the red lights on the back of the train, which moved away, scarcely faster than a man could walk, until it rounded a curve and left no more than a humming of the rails to tell of its passing, and the long whistle of the locomotive echoing down the night sky.
The dry grass bent before the wind, and seed pods rattled in the brush along the right of way.
James T. Kettleman was ended, and the man who had borne that name, making it feared and respected, stood now where he had stood so many years before, without a name. He was now a man without a past as he had been a boy without one.
"Good-bye," he said, but there was nobody to say the word to, and nothing to remember.
(from Flint, by Louis L'Amour)
He made no attempt to find and follow the trail left by Lang Adams, for the trails of men in a western land are apt to be channeled by their needs. Food, water, and compaionship of their kind - these are the things that make trails converge.
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
Most of you know of the famous outlaw leaders Butch Cassidy (Robert LeRoy Parker) and the Sundance Kid (Harry Longabaugh). Longabaugh's girlfriend was Etta Place. In the famous 1969 movie, Longabaugh and Place were portrayed by Robert Redford and Katharine Ross, two of Hollywood's prettiest faces. Very often, criminal types are over-cast in movies in typical Hollywood style. However, in the case of Longabaugh and Place, they may actually have been under-cast, as the real-life picture below shows. The outlaw pair made a strikingly attractive couple, and there actually was a certain amount of resemblance between Longabaugh and Redford.
"He was running when he came here, Kim, and he will always be running. He killed six men because he thought somebody was hunting him, and nobody was. Once you get the law on your trail, there's just no place to rest."
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
He knew the man by sight, but had never known his name. But there was no question about the gun. It was a Colt .44, a weapon with considerable authority.
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
"Had a puncher who worked for me one time, Lang. Folks said he was the slickest horse and cow thief around, and he'd robbed banks, too. Some eastern feller came out here and wrong a song about him. You know, Lang, that man worked for me because he was hungry and needed a place to eat and sleep. And he worked hard, too. He was right proud of that song, and of all the talk about him. But one time we got to talking and from one thing and another it deeloped that here he was closing in on sixty years old, and he'd no place to go and nobody much who wanted him."
"Could happen, I suppose."
"It did happen. But that wasn't the worst of it, Lang. This slick crook they were singing that ballad about, he was sixty years old and he'd spent forty years of that time in prison."
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
"I've heard you're pretty good with a gun yourself."
"I don't advertise it. When I have to use a gun, I use it. But I'll never draw on any man if I can avoid it. A dead man makes a bad pillow for comfortable sleeping."
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
"The trouble with crime is, you never know who's watching. You may see nobody, hear nobody. You may be sure nobody is anywhere around, but somebody can be and usually is. There's a bum sleeping in a dark doorway, somebody starting to draw the curtains at an unlighted window, the man who forgets something and comes back up the street. Maybe it's a cowboy who decides to catch himself a bit of sleep under a tree, a woman gathering flowers . . . you never know who's around."
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
He hesitated a moment, some inner delicacy making him uncomfortable at this invading the privacy of another man's belongings. He was himself an essentially private man, friendly but reserved, standing a cool sentry before the doors of his personal life. He had equal respect for the privacy of others.
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
When he got up from the table and reached for his hat, Bess turned around, a fork in her hand. "Borden, be careful."
He walked outside in the bright morning sun and looked toward the McCoy house. How could he be careful when he had no idea who had to be careful of?
Somebody in town wanted to kill him. Somebody in town was getting very, very worried. For somebody time was running out . . . somebody who had shot before, and would again, at any instant.
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
Hyatt Johnson was a cool, hard-eyed man with a level gaze and less expression than a hard-boiled egg.
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
"Good," Jerry said.
"Jerry! It's incredible," Pam said. "Good indeed. What does good mean?"
"Means it's good," Jerry said, and swallowed. He dipped his spoon. "Incidentally," he said,"good is an absolute term." He raised his full spoon. "Except to a copy writer," he said, and put the spoon to his lips. He swallowed. "Of course," he said, "you can always use a 'very' if you want to be extravagant."
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
There they came, and Bill's eyes were not the only ones on the rather tall, slender girl who stood so easily and so confidently, with the dark man on her left and a little behind her. Peggy Mott knew that people looked at her, Pam thought. She had learned to know it, and not show she knew it.
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
He listened again and said, "Right." He put the telephone back in its cradle. He returned to the papers on his desk, which were a monument - a monument still in the progress of growth - to the efficiency of the New York Police Department. They represented efficiency, tirelessnss; they also represented, Bill Weigand thought wearily, a certain ponderousness, and the momentum of ponderousness.
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Francs Lockridge)
She was not handcuffed, simply because Stein thought, as Weigand would have thought, that it was absurdly unnecessary. And Stein did not notice Carey, except as a figure in a shadow, braced against the wind, because in routine operations you did not plan against the preposterous. So Stein was quite unprepared for the preposterous when it occurred.
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
One way to keep alive in the Pacific had been quite literally to act before you thought. You did not wait for opportunity to knock; you moved to seize before opportunity had time to lift a hand. You made mistakes, but you kept alive.
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
The fingerprint men were at work there. There was plenty of work, but Bill Weigand doubted much would come of it. There would be prints enough - of Elaine Britton, or her maid, of any casual guests who might have come since the room was last polished by Agnes Connors. It was too bad, Bill thought, that there was so seldom a telltale glass, marked with lipstick, laden with revealing prints; so seldom a cigarette of peculiar brand. Murderers were inconsiderate.
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
He had been an ordinary man; that had been the trouble. With all the money he had, with all that money gve him, with all his skill in money's use, he had still been an ordinary man, saying ordinary things, showing more than usual spite when he was annoyed. It was money made the spite effective, hurting, not any special quality in the man. He had not even been a first-rate heel, this Tony Mott of whom, now, everyone was making so much. He had had millions of dollars and used them irresponsibly. That was all you could say of him.
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
"Maybe there'll be a break. Don't volunteer. The old rule. We'll make them find us. That's the first thing. If they do - when they do - none of this. You understand? You weren't there. You don't know anything." He looked at her, hard. "You'll do that?" he asked. "Dumb up? Most people talk themselves into holes. What you don't say won't hurt you."
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
"About that one I want to know everything," Bill said. "Where she came from, what she does, who pays her rent, what her friends think of her, who she - "
"O. K., Loot," Mullins said. "I get it."
"Specifically," Bill told him, "where she was a little after noon today, and how long she stayed there. And whether she was going to be or thought she was going to be, the next Mrs. Tony Mott."
"O. K., Loot," Mullins said. "We'll turn her inside out." He considered this. "Which would be a pity," he added. "On account of her outside - "
"Right," Weigand said. "I noticed, Sergeant."
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
"But," she said, "do you know that Mullins calls you Mr. Male Ox, Mr. Maillaux?"
Maillaux looked at her with round, puzzled eyes.
"Only," Pam said, and now she was speaking to Jerry rather than to the others, "isn't that a contradiction in terms, really? Because aren't oxen - "
"Yes, dear," Jerry said. I've always understood so."
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
She had seen a rat do that once, in a place she was staying when she had an engagement in a summer theater, and the rat had seemed to have many holes and all of them had been blocked by the people who were chasing the rat. The rat had run by her in its flight and it had been squealing and she had covered her face and made a kind of moaning sound, but not because she was afraid of the rat, although she was. She had shared the rat's fear, had moaned with its fear. She moaned now; there was a kind of whimper in her mind.
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
On the east side of Sixth Avenue between Tenth Street and the south side of Eighth Street, the winter wind always blows against you. It does not matter which way you go, uptown or down, the wind is in your face. A northwest wind is in your face, a northeast wind takes your breath way, a wind from the south buffets you head-on although you are walking with it. It had, Pam thought resentfully, something to do with the old Jefferson Market Courthouse. Pam looked at the courthouse with animosity.
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
"Don't go with anybody who has a gun on you. A person of criminal mind just wants to get you away from help where he can do what he wants without interference. Wherever you are, you are usually safer than where he would take you."
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
"There's no doubt," Pam said, "that three cats are a lot to watch. Of course, if she'd had all five, we'd only have had two - her and one. But when there were only two we had to have three. Because they were so fond of each other."
"What?" Bill said, and then said, "Never mind."
"Five kittens we couldn't have kept," Pam said, ignoring the last. So we'd have given away four. But three is just possible."
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Frances Lockridge)
"It can last for months, perhaps even for years, and merely grow stronger. Other emotions may fade and grow less important. Hatred is like a hunger and grows stronger . . . . Another thing hatred does is to crowd out everything else. It doesn't leave room for anything else."
(from Murder Is Served, by Richard and Francs Lockridge)
"Do you ever worry about how it will all turn out?"
He shrugged. "A man does what he can, whatever the situation. There's only one way to fight: to win, and anybody who uses force without using it to the utmost is playing the fool.
"I have been fighting all my life, yet I believe in peace. That doesn't do me one bit of good, though, against those men down there, because they have no idea of peace at all. The only thing they understand is violence. They would like for us to go down there and talk peace, but they would kill us all, and that would be an end of it. They would have peace over our dead bodies."
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
He did not for a moment believe they would fall back. A good runner can run a horse down . . . all it needs is time, and the Indians had time. He was away for now, but he could not run his horse forever and they would close in - those swift, deadly fighters following after him.
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
"This is a young land, its people love freedom, and by and large they are tolerant; but we must not become tolerant of evil, simply because it exists."
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
In the spinning of planets and the march of suns, in the centuries and the milleniums of time, one man is a small thing, and does not matter very much. It is how a man lives that matters, and how he dies. A man can live proudly, and he can die proudly.
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
The pioneer came not to raid, but to stay. He settled along the streams, built homes, fenced land. He settled at the water holes, and to the Indian it was a new pattern, one the Indian neither understood, nor liked. Many more white men were killed than Indians, but still they came.
The Indian way of fighting was to gether together, to raid, ravage, and disappear, returning to his own people with his spoils or his wounded. Indian battles were many, Indian wars were few.
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
"Will the Indians attack us?"
"No. Not unless there were five or six hundred of them, and this desert will hardly support so many. They'll watch us, and when we camp they'll stampede our stock if they can. Otherwise we won't even see them."
He paused. "We can always recruit more men, but they can not. There are just so many Indians in each tribe, and when they suffer casualties it is a severe loss. They won't risk it."
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
She had lived much of her life with her Uncle John McDonald, a man whose better world was always just across the horizon. There were many like him, but he was more fortunate than most, for he had married Aunt Madge, who was perfectly willing to cross any horizon by his side.
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
He had been thinking of coming back, but he knew that too often other things intervene and such plans come to nothing. If he once left here it was unlikely that he would return. In fact, he dared not. He had seen too many men surrender to the witchery of desert nights, and to the enchantment and mystery of it all. The desert could be a demanding mistress who gave up nothing to a man, but took all, whatever he had to give.
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
An Indian out there moved, and Callaghen fired without looking at his piece; he looked only at the Indian. The Mohave stumbled and fell.
That would put a scare into them. Indians were wise - they saw no advantage in a victory bought with the death of their own warriors. They did not believe in losing men to gain ground, or losing a man for any reason if it could be avoided. They were not afraid to die, but they knew that a dead warrior kills no enemies.
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
For three days they had thought of that water, longed for it, dreamed wild dreams of it. The most gorgeous woman under heafen would have been spurned by any one of them for one swallow of water, be it brackish, sulphurous, or whatever.
(from Callaghen, by Louis L'Amour)
Simon watched Linette's slender figure make its way through isolated empty tables. "You have," he said, facing Bonnet, "two gorgeous girls in the family. The other one," he thrust his chin, "is rolled in one of my shirts upstairs."
"Ah," Bonnet said, not particularly surprised at the information. "Which one, may I ask, do you intend to keep?"
"The real one."
"Ah," Bonnet said again, "an extremely wise choice. What will you do with - " He too thrust up his chin to indicate the higher reaches of the hotel where Simon had his room.
"Leave her in my hands. I shall sell her for you, sir. With your permission. And turn over the cash this evening."
"And the other gorgeous girl? Shall I turn her over to you in exchange?"
"Thank you, sir. I hoped you would."
Bonnet made a restless stir. "Fate," he said, "to havfe landed up with an honest son-in-law."
(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)
She heard: "007? M speaking." And she giggled, drawing around her the loose silk ties of her bed jacket. "Our telephones may be tapped, so we will conduct this converation entirely in Swahili. Get," Simon's voice said, "on a slow boat to China. A Lithuanian deckhand will molest you at exactly four-thirty-three P.M."
Linette said: "You don't think we really are being trapped, do you?"
"We? You and I? What importance do we have? Two young lovers having breakfast together a mile away from one another. You are having breakfast, aren't you? Or do you always sound as if you're chewing something before you put in your store teeth?"
(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)
"Well?"
"We have our hiding place."
"What is it?"
"Broom closet."
"Big enough for two?"
"A bit of a squeeze," he admitted.
"How long will we - "
"Now, look, lady, at the height of the season, what can you expect? Everything else is all filled."
(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)
It was not true, Bonnet thought, that a man could turn gray overnight. Nor that he could age twenty years in a day. Age perhaps was only a question of optimism. He forced a simulation of a smile as he entered the apartment. If it were a question of expression, he might at least try to put on the sort of forced gaiety that was common to aging, wrinkled, defeated women. Though they still looked aged, these transparent masks at least raised their own spirits and gave them an illusion of deceiving others.
(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)
In case you never heard of him, Yousuf Karsh was perhaps the greatest portrait photographer of the 20th Century. Over twenty of his photos appeared on the cover of Life magazine. And even if you never heard of Karsh, unless you have lived on a desert island, you have seen his 1941 photograph of Winston Churchill. The Prime Minister's legendary scowl was because Karsh had just stepped forward and removed Churchill's cigar from his mouth. As much as any other, this picture became the symbol of British determination during World War II.
"When he said he'd go through the back door for the Cellini, he probably meant the girl. It would be amusing if he should be stuck with the girl."
"Stuck with her?"
"Yes, marry her to inherit the statue. Why not? I know stranger stories. Why, a client of mine once bought an entire chateau just for the fireplace screen in an upstairs bedroom. That's the sort of mentality we're up against in my business."
(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)
First off, Boyer never actually said, "Come with me to the casbah," in the movie Algiers. It was used in the trailer, and in endless parodies of the movie.
He was married for 44 years to British actress Pat Patterson, until her death. He committed suicide two days after her death.
His only child, son Michael Charles, committed suicide by playing Russian roulette after separating from his girlfriend.
Although nominated four times for Best Actor, Boyer never won the Oscar.
Leland, with that athletic stride of someone who does twenty push-ups each morning and avoids starchy foods, on reaching the Van Gogh, started rocking back an forth on his heels, appraising the painting with what seemed to Bonnet a mask of indifference. Smart as a fox, Bonnet thought to himself. He will not tip his hand. He glances at it as though politely, with no interest in it whatever. It's the oldest flea-market trick in the world.
(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)
"What's that?" he asked, turning apprehensively.
"Only iodine."
"Will it hurt?"
Linette met his eyes with a very pointed glance of her own. "Burglars are brave."
"I told you I'm not a regular burglar," he complained. "I only burgle when I'm hungry."
"Do you always dress in dinner clothes when you go out to burgle?"
"Of course," he said as if it were a self-evident rule. "I'm a society burglar. Ouch." He leaped into the air at the touch of the iodine, though Linette had applied it ever so gently. "And," he added, pulling down his sleeve, "I certainly don't expect people to shoot at me."
(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)
For professional reasons he had cultivated the manners of a dandy, blessed as he was with the bland good looks of a window-dresser's dummy: smooth and waxy complexion, straight silver-gray hair, a black hairline of a mustache, and perfectly vacant dark eyes that seemed to stare at the world through a blank, hard shield of glass.
(from How To Steal A Million, by Michael Sinclair)
In my youth, I remember vividly one television program called International Showtime. Each week it would feature a different circus. The host was Don Ameche. Decades later, when my wife and I became big fans of old movies, we got more acquainted with Ameche's career as an actor, which spanned 58 years, and included an Oscar late in his career. He was married for 54 years to Honore Prendergast, who bore him six children.
Don's younger brother was Jim, who was about seven years his junior. He also acted, although his career was more heavily weighted toward radio. Jim also had six children.
A cousin of the acting Ameches was Alan "The Horse" Ameche, who won the Heiman Trophy in college and went on to play six seasons in the NFL.
Beverly Garland was a busy television actress from 1949 to 2005, perhaps best known for her role on the My Three Sons sitcom. Like several other actors and actresses, she served as an Honorary Mayor of a California city, in her case North Hollywood. For 39 years, she had the somewhat unwieldly real-life designation of Mrs. Filmore Crank.
What a female novelist wants with an occasional table in her study containing a vase, two framed photographs, a saucer, a lacquer box, and a jar of potpouri, I don't know; but that was that Bingo's Rosie had, and I caught it squarely with my right hip and knocked it endways. It seemed to me for a moment as if the whole world had dissolved into a kind of cataract of glass and china. A few years ago, when I legged it to America to elude my Aunt Agatha, who was out with her hatchet, I remember going to Niagara and listening to the Falls. They made much the same sort of row, but not so loud.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Change of scene is the thing. I heard of a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl wired him, 'Come back, Muriel.' Man started to write out a reply, suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname, so never answered at all, and lived happily ever after."
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"It is a known scientific fact that there is a particular style of female that does seem strangely attracted to the sort of fellow I am."
"Very true, sir."
"I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so."
"It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir."
"Very possibly. Anyway, it has happened to me over and over again. It was what happened in the case of Honoria Glossop. She was notoriously one of the brainiest women of her year at Girton, and she just gathered me in like a bull pup swallowing a piece of steak."
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"No doubt you remember my mother?" said Professor Pringle mournfully, indicating Exhibit A.
"Oh-ah!" I said, achieving a bit of a beam.
"And my aunt," sighed the prof, as if things were getting worse and worse.
"Well, well, well!" I said, shooting another beam in the direction of Exhibit B.
"They were saying only this morning that they remembered you," groaned the prof, abanoning all hope.
There was a pause. The whole strength of the company gazed at me like a family group out of one of Edgar Allan Poe's less cheery yarns, and I felt my joie de vivre dying at the roots.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves, and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I don't understand a word you say. You're English, aren't you?"
I admitted it. She didn't say a word. And she did it in a way that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was brought home to me that she didn't like Englishmen, and that if she had had to meet an Englishman I was the one she'd have chosen last."
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Famous comedian Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was from 1947 to 1961 the host of the game show "You Bet Your Life." For most of the time it ran on both radio and television. The personna which Groucho cultivated on the air was that of a lecherous "dirty old man" type. Evidently that may not have been too far from reality.
Groucho was married three times. His first wife was a chorus girl. He was 29 at the time, and she was 19. His second wife was 21 when they married, and he was 54. At the time of his third marriage, he was 64 and the bride was 24.
She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aung Agatha, back in England, has looked at me in exactly the same way many a tie, and it nevr fails to make my spine curl.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a month he would take three days writing a few poems; the other three hundred and twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn't know there was enough money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in which Rocky lived; but it seems that, if you stick to exhortaions to young men to lead the strenuous life and don't shove in any rhymes, American editors fight for the stuff.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I could guess what the old boy was thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring, for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gents' underwear.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Almost forgotten in today's media saturation is the first mega-star of the NBA. George Mikan would be scoffed at today when athletic 7-footers abound on every corner, but he revolutionized the game of basketball and made the big man relevant. True basketball fans know who he was, but since his playing career ended about the time I was born, there is not much film footage of his playing.
Mikan was born in Joliet, Illinois to a Croatian father and a Lithuanian mother. As a boy, he shattered one of his knees so badly that he was kept in bed for a year and a half. When he entered DePaul University, he was an awkward 6-10 boy who wore thick glasses because of his near-sightedness. Legendary coach Ray Meyer taught Mikan to shoot hook shots with either hand - long before Lew Alcindor did it.
Mikan married his girlfriend in 1947, and they remained together for 58 years until his death. They had six children. Mikan was what he appeared to be - a "gentle giant" who was tough and relentless on the court, but friendly and amicable in private life. He suffered from diabetes, and in his later years his right leg was amputated below the knee.
Shaquille O'Neal paid for Mikan's funeral, saying, "Without Number 99 (Mikan), there is no me."
"Where's that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?"
"The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the porter, who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal on account of being bitten by him in the calf of the leg."
I don't think I've ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I had misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a lot of good in him.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Rollo is not used to you yet, sir," said Jeeves, regarding the bally quadruped in an admiring sort of way. "He is an excellent watch-dog."
"I don't want a watch-dog to keep me out of my rooms."
"No, sir."
"Well, what am I to do?"
"No doubt in time the animal will learn to disciminate, sir. He will learn to distinguish your peculiar scent."
"What do you mean - my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that one of these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all right."
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Corky's uncle, you see, didn't want him to be an artist. He didn't think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and work his way up. And what Corky said was that, while he didn't know what they did at the bottom of a jute business, instinct told him that it was something too beastly for words.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I have never had such a shock in my life. The book is an outrage. It is impossible. It is horrible!
"But, dash it, the family weren't so bad as all that."
"It is not a history of the family at all. Your uncle has written his reminiscences! He calls them 'Recollections of a Long Life.'"
I began to understand. As I say, Uncle Willoughby had been somewhat on the tabasco side as a young man, and it began to look as if he might have turned out somethign pretty fruity if he had started recollecting his long life.
"If half of what he has written is true," said Florence, "your uncle's youth must have been perfectly appalling. The moment we began to read, he plunged straight into a most scandalous story of how he and my father were thrown out of a music-hall in 1887!"
"Why?"
"I decline to tell you why."
It must have been something pretty bad. It took a lot to make them cuck people out of music-halls in 1887.
(from Carry On, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Corky, old horse, I have in my time extracted various sums of money from various people, and some of them have given cheerfully of theri abundance and others have unbelted in a manner that you might call wry. But never in the whole of my career have I beheld a fellow human being cough up in quite the spirit that his bloke Joe the Lawyer did. He was a short-necked man, and there was one moment when I thought his blood-pressure was going to be too much for him. He turned a rather vivid shade of maroon, and his lips trembled as if he were praying. But in the end he dipped into the satchel and counted out the money."
(from "The Level Business Head," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The Battler was a heavweight pugilist whom Ukridge had dug up from somewhere and managed intermittently over a period of a year or so. In which enterprise he had been considerably hampered by the other's unfortunate temperatment. A peerless scrapper, this Billson, with muscles strong as iron bands, but of the very maximum boneheadedness. An eccentric soul. He had a habit of developing a sentimental pity for his opponent toward the middle of the second round, or else he would get religion on the eve of battle and refuse to enter the ring. It complicated things a good deal for his manager.
(from "The Come-back of Battling Billson," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Patrick stopped at the newsstand for cigarettes and the late papers. I bought a book, a great collection of world masterpieces for twenty-five cents. Not that I expected to read it, but I never feel entirely equipped without a book, particularly when it's everything ever written for only two bits.
(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
In that particular studio which had engaged her services, it seems a good deal of latitude is granted to the distinguished authors on the pay-roll. The kindly powers-that-be recognize the existence of the artist temperment and make allowances for it. If, therefore, my aunt had confined herself to snootering directions, harrying camera-men, and chasing supervisors up trees, nothing would have been said. But there is one thing the artist soul must not do at the Colossal-Superfine, and that is swat the Main Boss with a jewelled hand over the ear-hole.
And this, in a moment of emotion due to the fact that he had described some dialogue submitted by her as a lot of baloney that didn't mean a thing, my Aunt Julia had done.
(from "Ukridge and the Home From Home," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
He looked cynical again. "Did you question Moran yourself?"
Patrick's nod was full of gloom.
"I tried. It's like talking at a lump of dough."
(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
As he mentioned his name, his tone seemed to take on a sort of respectful affection. One of he mysteries of my life is why this godlike man, while treating me, who pay my rent regularly, with a distant hauteur, as if I were something very young and callow in baggy trousers whom he had just caught eating the entree with a fish-knife, should positively fawn on Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, who is - as has been for years - a recognized blot on Society.
(from "Ukridge and the Home from Home," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I don't suppose you are familiar with Bottleton East, except by name. It is a prett tough sort of neighbourhood, rather like Limehouse only with fewer mysterious Chinamen. The houses are small and grey, cats abound, and anyone who has a bit of old paper or a piece of orange peel throws it on the pavement.
(from "The Masked Troubadour," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The air was colder and clearer, but all the same, the dim-out made the night peculiar. We walked very slowly. I slipped my hand through Patrick's arm and said I would never get over the feeling you had in a dim-out that somebody was creeping up behind with the idea of socking you in the back of the head. He grinned, but as he lit our cigarettes he quietly looked behind us.
(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
"Mr. Carrington, who reminded me of a biscuit with a Boston accent, wore a dinner coat."
(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
I lifted eyebrows. Stealing her own technique, I did it as though they weighed tons and made lifting a chore.
(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
"Where, I've often asked myself, are the great sweeping moustaches of our boyhood? I've got a photograph of my grandfather as a young man in the album at home, and he's just a pair of eyes staring over a sort of quickset hedge."
(from "Buried Treasure," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I never notice noses unless they are wrong for a face, and his wasn't.
(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
"I told Mother I was going to stand up this afternoon when the police came back to ask questions and tell the truth about Anna, but Mother says it isn't fair to say unpleasant things about the dead. The dead can't answer back, she says."
(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
"New York is the kind of place where everybody tries to act like the best people because nobody knows if they are or aren't."
(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
Patrick grinned and said lightly, "I suspect Goldberg takes anything he does very seriously. A mere patrolman who corrects you for addressing him as a sergeant is bound to be a very honest man."
(from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
In her novel, The Pink Umbrella, Frances Crane makes reference to a "porkpie hat." I was not familiar with that style, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia: The first hat to be called a pork pie was a hat worn primarily by British and American women from around 1830 through to about 1865. It consisted of a small round hat with a narrow curled-up brim, a low flat or slightly domed crown with a crease running around the inside top edge, and usually with a ribbon or hatband fastened around the shoulder where the crown joined the brim. It was often worn with a small feather or two attached to a bow on one side of the hat. Such hats might be made of any number of materials (straw, felt, cotton canvas covered in silk, etc.). What caused them to be called "pork pies" was the shape and crease of the crown and the narrowness of the brim (sometimes called a "stingy brim" in reference to its brevity).
"The air was warmish, tender, faintly vailed with thin haze, and full of the somewhat depraved smells which in the cities pass as springlike." (from The Pink Umbrella, by Frances Crane)
I thought that was an interesting description of springtime in New York by the author of the Pat and Jean Abbott series of mysteries.
The mists cleared away, and he saw Dolly. Her face was wearing the smug expression of a female juvenile delinquent who has just played a successful practical joke on another member of her age group, and her sunny smile, which Soapy admired so much, seemed to gash him like a knife. Not for the first time he was wishing that, if it could be done without incurring any unpleasant after-effects for himself, he could introduce a pinch of some little-known Asiatic poison into this woman's morning cup of coffee or stab her in several vital spots with a dagger of Oriental design. A vision rose before his eyes of Mrs. Thomas G. Molloy sinking for the third time in some lake or mere and himself, with a sneer, throwing her an anvil.
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
His departure left Dolly a prey to mixed emotions. As a man she liked George and found him an entertaining companion, but she could not forget that for all his suavity and the sparkle of his conversation he represented the awful majesty of the Law and, were he to learn of her activities in the Prosser home, would have no hesitation in piling on the back of her neck and whistling for stern-faced colleagues to come and fasten the gyves to her wrists. Better, then, that they should part. His going had deprived her of the pleasure of listening to his views on this and that and wondering how he could talk the way he did without having a potato in his mouth, but she had also lost the unpleasant feeling that centipedes were crawling up and down her spine which always affected her when hobnobbing with the gendarmerie.
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Scalpo, the lotion that lends a lustre"
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Pure slush, but it was taken by Popgood and Grooly, and didn't do too badly, and they sent the sheets over to Singleton Brothers in New York, who turn out books like sausages and don't care how bad they are, so long as they run to eighty thousand words."
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Did I ever tell you about my married life, Sally?"
"No, never. I knew you had been married, of course."
"You'd have liked Joe. Everybody did. I loved him. His trouble was, he was so weak. Just a rabbit who couldn't say 'Boo' to a goose."
Sally knew that the number of rabbits capable of saying "Boo" to geese was very limited, but she did not point this out.
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Soapy marshalled his thoughts. He had finished that second martini now, and was feeling calmer. The knowledge that seven miles separated him from Leila York had done much to restore his composure. And he was reminding himself, as Dolly had reminded him yesterday, that you can't win 'em all. It was a comforting reflection. He was not entirely his old hearty self as he began his story, but he had shaken off that dizzy feeling which comes to the man who pays a social call and suddenly finds his hostess jabbing a shot-gun into his diaphragm.
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Is he still running that private-eye racet of his?" The question surprised Mr. Molloy.
"Why, of course he is, sweetie. Why wouldn't he be? It's only a month since you've been away."
"Well, a month seems a long time for Chimp Twist to stay out of the coop. How's he doing?"
"He didn't say, but I guess he doesn't bother much about clients. The J. Sheringham Adair private Investigation Agency's just a front."
Dolly laughed bitterly.
"J. Sheringham Adair! What a name to call himself."
"Had to call himself something."
"Well, why not Heels Incorporated or Doublecrossers Limited or sump'n? I tell you, Soapy, whever I think of that undersized boll weevil, I go hot all over, clear down to the soles of my shoes."
"Oh, Chimp's not so bad."
"Not so bad as what?"
Mr. Molloy, though trying to be tolerant, found this question difficult to answer. He changed the subject.
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Dolly Molloy unquestionably took the eye. She was a spectacular blonde of the type that is always getting murdered in its step-ins in mystery stories. Her hair was golden, her eyes hazel, her lips and cheeks aflame with colour, and she carried herself with a challenging jautiness. Wolf-whistling is of course prohibited in the lobby of Barribault's Hotel, but quite a few of the visiting maharajahs looked as if they would have liked to, and it was plain that only by the exercise of the most iron self-restraint that the Texas millionaires were holding themselves in. You could see their lips puckering.
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Oh, he was a regular devil in those days. And look at him now. All dried up like a kippered herring and wouldn't kiss Helen of Troy if you brought her to him asleep in a chair with a spring of mistletoe suspended over her. That's what comes of being a solicitor, it saps the vital juices. Johnny doesn't even embezzle his clients' money, which I should have thought was about the only fun a solicitor can get out of life."
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
She knew that she had done the sensible thing, but that did not prevent her feeling that her heart was being torn in small pieces by a platoon of muscular wild cats, than which few experiences are less agreeable.
(from Ice In the Bedroom, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You got any idea what this is all about?" Arnold snapped. "This isn't just a toy, you know."
"We're submerging," Jim said cheerfully. "We're going down around five hundred feet. Then we'll find a passage and get out of it into Todahe Bay. There we'll find the Copenhagen loaded with Submarines, and we'll shoot her one in the pants - I hope."
"You hope!" Arnold said sarcastically. "You mean, I hope! And if something happens and you're wrong?"
"We'll wash out," Jim said simply and shrugged.
"Yeah?" William said. "That's oay for you, but I've got a date with a girl in Makassar."
(from "Well of the Unholy Light," by Louis L'Amour)
Conversations were in progress in the smoking room of the Drones with a view to maing up a party to go and see the Wrestling Championship at the Albert Hall, and a Bean suggested that Oofy Prosser be invited to join the expedition. Oofy, he put it to the meeting, had more pimples than the man of taste liked to be seen about with and was perhaps the nearest approach to a piece of cheese which the human race had so far produced, but he possessed one outstanding merit which went far to counter-balance these defects - viz., a stupendous bank acount, and it was quite conceivable that, if handled right, he might loosen up and stand supper after the performance.
(from "Oofy, Freddie and the Beef Trust," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
All through Reginald's deeply moving performance she had sat breathless, her mind in a whirl and her soul stirred to her very depths. With each low note that he pulled from the soles of his shoes she could feel the old affection and esteem surging back into her with a whoosh, and long before he had taken his sixth bow she knew that he was, if one may coin a phrase, the only onion in the stew and that it would be madness to try to seek happiness elsewhere, particularly as the wife of a man with large ears and no chin, who looked as if he were about to start in the two-thirty race at Kempton Park.
(from "Big Business," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Reginald was not a quickwitted man, but, reading btween the lines, he seemed to sense what she was trying to say.
"This sounds like the raspberry."
"It is."
"You mean all is over?"
"I do."
"You are casting me aside like a . . . what are those things people cast aside?"
"'Worn-out glove' is, I presume, the expression for which you were groping?"
"Do you know," said Reginald, struck by a thought, "I always give mine to the Salvation Army. However, that is not the point at issue. The point at issue is that you have broken my bally heart."
"A girl with less self-control," said Amanda, switching her tennis racquet, "would have broken your bally head."
(from "Big Business," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"When you know him really well you will realize that you are up against something quite exceptional. Take a wart hog, add a few slugs and some of those things you see under flat stones, sprinkle liberally with pimples, and you will have something which, while of course less loathsome than Alexander Prosser, will give you the general idea."
(from "The Word in Season," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Purkiss looked at him fishily. Nature havign made it impossible or him to look at anyone otherwise, he being a man with a face like a halibut.
"Story?"
Bingo explained the circumstances. He said that he was the author of "Tibby's Wonderful Adventure" in the current issue, and Purkiss Oh-yes-ed and said he had read it with considrable interest, and Bingo oh-thanks-ed and simpered coyly, and then there was a rather long silence.
"Well, how about the emolument?" said Bingo at length, getting down to the res.
Purkiss started. The fishy glitter in his eye became intensified. He looked like a halibut which has just been asked by another halibut to lend it a couple of quid till next Wednesday.
(from "TheWord in Season," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
It would be idle to pretend that, as I made my way down the stairs, I was my usual debonair self. The feet cold, and if there had been any sudden noises, I would have started at them. My meditations on Aunt Dahlia, who had let me in for this horror in the night, were rather markedly lacking in a nephew's love. Indeed, it is not too much to say that every step I took deepened my conviction that what the aged relative needed was a swift kick in the pants.
(from "Jeeves Makes an Omelette," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Suppose you were a great musician. Would you like to have to listen to a cheap, vulgar tune - the same tune - day after day? Or suppose that every time you went to lunch at the Drones you had to sit opposite someone who looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame? Would you enjoy that? Of couse you wouldn't. You'd be sick as mud."
I saw her point. Many a time at the Drones I have had to sit opposite Oofy Prosser, and it has always taken the edge off a usually keen appetite.
(from "Jeeves Makes an Omelette," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Stoker was staring with his left eye. The other had now closed like some tired flower at nightfall. I couldn't help feeling that Brinkley must have been a jolly good shot to have plugged him so squarely. It's not the easist thing in the world to hit a fellow in the eye with a potato at a longish range. I know, because I've tried it. The very nature of the potato, it being a rummy shape and covered with knobs, renders accurate aiming a tricky business.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
We said earlier that he did not need the cash, but it was we who said it, not Oofy. His views on the matter were sharply divergent. Whenever there was cash around, he wanted to get it. It was well said of him at the Drones taht despite his revolting wealth he would always willingly walk ten miles in tight boots to pick up twopence. Many put the figure even lower.
(from "The Fat of the Land," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
But though, with the desk between us, I could not see these two, I could hear them, and most unpleasant it was. I have known Chuffy, as I say, practically from childhood, and in the course of the years I have seen him in a variety of differing circumstances and in many moods. And I never would have believed him capable of the revolting slush which now proceeded from his lips at the rate of about two hundred and fifty words to the minute. When I tell you that the observation, "There, there, little girl" was the only one I can bring myself to quote, you will be able to gather something of the ordeal to which I was subjected. And, to make matters worse, on an empty stomach, mind you.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"That is why I say that, no matter if father does tear the roof off, I am not going to marry that poor, persecuted lamb. Why should I? I've nothing against him."
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
By this time a shrews bloke like this Stoker wa sbound to have guessed that his were the brains behind my escape, and it seemed not unlikely that he would make some tenative move towards scattering these brains on the hearthrug. His voice, when he spoke, undoubtedly indicated that some such idea was floating in his mind. It was harsh and roopy, and though all that he actually said by way of a start was "Ah!" a determined man can get a lot of meaning into an "Ah!"
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Speaking for myself, I have, as a rule, to be more or less lured to the feast. I mean to say, I don't as a general thing become what you might call breakfast-conscious till I've had my morning tea and rather thought things over a bit. And I can give no better indication of the extraordinary change which had come over my viewpoint now than by mentioning that there was a young fowl of sorts not far away engaged in getting outside a large, pink worm, and I could willingly have joined it at the fine board. In fact, I would have taken pot luck at this juncture with a buzzard.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
You know how it is. You go along for years looking on a fellow as a blister and a menace to the public weal, and then one day you suddenly hear of some decent thing he's done and it makes you feel there mut be good in the chap, after all. It was so in the matter of this Glossop. I had suffered much at his hands since first our paths had crossed. In the human Zoo which Fate has caused to centre about Bertram Wooster, he had always ranked high up among the more vicious specimens - man good judges indeed, indeed, considering that he even competed for the blue ribbon with that great scourge of modern times, my Aunt Agatha. But now, reviewing his recent conduct, I must admit that i found myself definitely softening towards him.
Nobody, I reasoned who could slosh young Seabury like that could be altogether bad. There must be fine metal somewhere among the dross.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
But she, poor simp, being so dashed glad to behold him, had not so much as begun to suspect that he, the circs being what they were, might possibly not be equally glad to behold her. With the result that when at this juncture he stepped back and folded his arms with a bitter sneer, it was as if he had jabbed her in the eye with a burnt stick. The light faded from her face, and in its stead there appeared the hurt, bewildered look of a barefoot dancer who, while halfway through "The Vision of Salome," steps on a tin tack.
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You sound annoyed. And I can't see why. I should have thought you would have been only too glad of the chance of helping me get to the man I love. Having this heart of gold I hear so much about."
"The point is not whether I have a heart of gold. Heaps of people have hearts of gold and yet would be upset at finding girls in their bedrooms in the small hours. What you don't seem to realize, what you and this Jeeves of yours have omitted to take into your calculations, is that I have a reputation to keep up, and unspotted name to maintain in its pristing purity. This cannot be done by entertaining girls who come in, in the middle of the night, without so much as a by-your-leave and coolly pinch your heliotrope pyjamas . . ."
"You didn't expect me to sleep in a wet swimming suit?"
(from Thank You, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The author of the famous (infamous) novel beginning, "It was a dark and stormy night" was Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton. His son, Robert, was made 1st Earl of Lytton. The current holder of the title is John Peter Michael Scawen Lytton, 5th Earl of Lytton, 18th Baron Wentworth. Lord Lytton is a descendent of the famous poet Lord Byron.
"This has certainly put the butter on the spinach. I feel a new man."
This expression is from the Wodehouse novel, Thank You, Jeeves, published in 1934. It was not familiar to me. It obviously is intended to be positive. It supposedly means getting an extra source of income to help ends meet. I don't know that I would want to try it from a dietary standpoint, but it would be nice from a financial viewpoint.
Moira Lister was an actress who appeared in a couple of the old movies that we have, including The Limping Man. She was South African. There were a few interesting details about her life.
First, she was married for about 38 years to Jacques Gachassin-Lafitte, Viscount of Orthez. Her husband was a hero of the Rif War and owned a champagne vineyard.
In 1946, she went on a date with Neville Heath, a former South African Air Force Captain who months later murdered two women and was hanged.
The more he mused on L. P. Green, the more remote seemed the prospect of any girl betrothed to him deciding to do the sensible thing and detach herself from him. True, only a handful of the six hundred and forty-three pupils at the ancient foundation at which he had been educated had excelled L. P. Green as stinkers, but girls are sadly apt not to allow themselves to be influenced by a man's moral shortcomings. The outer crust rather than the soul within is what appeals to them, and it was futile to pretend that the outer crust of L. P. Green was not exceptional. And all he, Bill Hardy, had to pit against it was an honest heart and a certain rude skill at getting cats down from trees.
(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Engaged to someone else, yes," he conceded. "But only to Lionel Green." And when Bill said that he didn't see what the name of the man she was going to marry mattered, the salient fact being that she was going to marry him, he replied that that, on the contrary, was the whole nub and gist, because it was out of the question that any girl, however much she might in a moment of temporary insanity have got betrothed to him, would think seriously of marrying Lionel Green. The madness was bound to pass, leaving her once more in circulation.
(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
In her bedroom Kelly lit the last cigarette of the day and gave herself up to meditation. She was thinking how much she loved Henry and wishing, for her woman's instinct toldher that he felt the same for her as she did for him, that he could bring himself to adopt the forthright methods of the late Theodore Stickney. She had spoken to Jane of Theodore kissing her like a ton of bricks, and it was precisely thus that he would have liked Henry to kiss her. His failure to do so, she supposed, was due to his being English. An Englishman, she thought bitterly, would have to have a signed permit from a girl before he felt justified in kissing her.
(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The purchase of the chocolate bars completed, they came out into the street.
"Well," said Jane, and she was so plainly about the add the word 'Goodbye' that Bill hastened to interrupt her. This conversation had confirmed him in the opinion that a single moment spent without her at his side would be a moment wasted.
(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"So we got engaged. The family put up a considerable beef when it was announced, of course, and I don't blame them, because I wasn't everybody's dream girl and they thought Theodore was blotting the what's that thing you blot?"
"The escutcheon?"
"Is that it? Escutcheon sounds to me like some kind of fish."
(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Everything about this club of Lionel's depressed Jane, and not least the ordeal to which visitors were subjected immediately on entering. They found themselves in a vast hall liberally provided with repellent-looking statues and presided over by a porter who might have been the model for any one of them. To him they have their names and the name of their host, and the porter, plainly not believing their story for a moment but deciding that it would be amusing to lure them on beore exposing their pretensions, dispatched a page in quest of the member they asked for, confident that he would return with the information that the gentleman had nevr heard of them in his life. And that, he seemed to be saying, would teach them not to come here trying to borrow money.
(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Actress Helene Whitney was active in films from 1939 to 1948. She had some impressive connections in her non-Hollywood life. For instance, on her mother's side she was a grandniece and cousin twice removed of Alexander Graham Bell. Her father was a first cousin once removed of President Teddy Roosevelt. She was married for three years to Richard Reynolds, heir to the aluminum and tobacco fortunes.
"Then be on the alert. Have a care that he doesn't get called to the telephone at the end of the meal, leaving you stuck with the bill. Your best policy, of course, would be to sever relations over the after-luncheon coffee. Yes, that's the thing to do. Tell him you've been giving it some thought during his absence, and it's all off."
"Won't that offend him?"
"On the contrary. He'll applaud your good sense. He knows perfectly well what a hound and Tishbite he is. People have been telling him for years. I was at school with L. P. Green and I have a fund of stories about him, all stressing his unfitness for human consumption. He has absolutely nothing to recommend him as a biological specimen."
(from The Purloined Paperweight, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Long ago there was a lady left money with me. She has never returned and when I tried the name she gave me and the place, nothing was known, but someday, needing it, she will seek me out. She will find lands she owns and a house here and there, and each year I study the money and judge what must be done with it, for she was a woman who trusted at least one man and shall not regret it.
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)
"Each of us does what he must do. I may kill the wolf who kills my sheep, but I understand him, too If the wolf must die that my sheep may live, so be it. But I ned not hate the wolf for what it is his nature to be."
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)
"Like all the Irish," he said, amused, "you talk easily, and always with the right words." He scowled. "Chantry, I know not the name. Should there not be a Mac or an O before it?"
"I had another name once," I said, "but put it aside long since I discovered," I spoke wryly, "that those of my name did not live long. When a land is taken and the people remain unconquered it is considered wise to eliminate all those about who an uprising might gather."
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)
I directed the loading of supplies, food, extra canvas, and I watched the storage of powder and shot. In every way I attempted to make myself useful. Clifford might wish for bold men, but useful men were just as necessary.
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)
"My old master, George Bishop, used to say that writing was not only talent, but it was character, the character of the writer. Many are called, he would say, but few are chosen, and it is character that chooses them. In the last analysis it is persistence that matters."
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)
An old woman appeared from the bracken as though rising from it, and I saw for the first time a path there. She spoke to Fergus and her Gaelic held a wild, strange sound unlike any I'd heard, but pleasant to the ear. It set me to thinking of the bagpipes sounding across the moors.
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)
"Lad, lad! D'y' think I ken not your Gaelic? You're Irish as Paddy's pig, and so am I, but there's those who would have my heart if the chance offered."
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour. I like that expressions, "Irish as Paddy's pig.")
What had become, I wondered, of the old breed? Of the Pizarros, of the Ponce de Leons, the Balboas and the Alvarados? They were hard, fierce men, many of them survivors of the Moorish wars. Bloody men in a bloody time, but in their own way they had been ruthlessly efficient. Nothing had stopped them.
These people before me were the latecomers, the courtiers, the politicians, skilled at intrigue and the use of family and political connections, who had outwitted the conquistadores at court, robbing them of the fruits of their hard-won battles and taking the profits for themselves. But the lions had made the kill, and the vultures now ate the meat.
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)
"Captain, to be an honest man is not easy, but I fear that that is what I am. It is an affliction of mine that tries me sorely. Yet . . . what can a man do? I want only what is mine, and not to trade upon the happiness or unhappiness of others."
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)
I have never been one to weep, nor to bewail my fortunes, which God knows have been ill enough, and I cannot find it in me to don the mantle of Job. Perhaps it is that I am Irish. We Irish wear the cloak of adversity with style.
(from Fair Blows the Wind, by Louis L'Amour)
There are some names which are fairly common, or have been in the past, which are just almost never heard in the United States. For example: Cuthbert, Argyle, Percival. How often do you hear those?
You probably never heard of him. Franklin Farnum was a character actor who appeared in films from the 1910s to the 1950s. He holds the distinction of having appeared in more films that won Academy Awards for Best Picture than any other acture. Probably the most memorable of them was Going My Way, which starred Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald.
Though a very few hours spent in the hard labour or incessant talking will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.
(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
The events of the evening were not very remarkable. The party, like other musical parties, comprehended a great many people who ahd real taste for the performance, and a great many more who had none t all; and the performers themselves were as usual, in their own estimation, and that of their immediate friends, the first private performers in England.
(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
His manners, to them, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon's coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be equally civil to him.
(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
But the correctness of his eye, and the delicacy of his taste, proved to be beyond his politeness. He was giving orders for a toothpick-case for himself, and till its size, shape, and ornaments were determined, all of which, after examining and debating for a quarter of an hour over every tooth-pick case in the shop, were finally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had no leisure to bestow any other attention on the two ladies, than what was comprised in three or four very broad stares; a kind of notice which served to imprint on Elinor the remembrance of a person and face of strong, natural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in the first style of fashion.
(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
"Her kindness is not sympathy; her good nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it."
(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
"Aye, it is a fine thing to be young and handsome. Well! I was young once, but I never was very handsome - worse luck for me. However I got a very good husband, and I don't know what the greatest beauty can do more."
(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
As there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be the most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have een properly idle ever since."
(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
She saw only that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it. He did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation.
(from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
His arm was seized from behind. It turned out to be a hanger-on from the D. A.'s office. "Mr. Roche wants you to phone him at once!"
"You can tell Tom Roche, for me, that he can jump in the East River."
"But he wants to know what it's all about. Who are you arresting, and for what? Some of them say the prisoner is one twin, and the rest of them say he's the other, and the D. A. is going batty . . ."
"He hasn't far to go, if you ask me," the Inspector remarked.
(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)
"Laurie has that respect for intellect, even for twisted intellect, that most healthy young morons have."
(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)
"Go back west, and be happy? Say, you don't think I like it out there, do you?"
"But I thought . . ."
"You've never lived through a Wyoming winter," Rose Keeley told her savagely. "Snowdrifts up to your armpits, blizzards three days a week, and mail about twice a month. You've never lived a day's drive from the nearest town, where you can't buy anything or go anywhere or have any fun! I hate it, I tell you!"
(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)
"I don't think that trail leads anywhere. Hubert was at the movie when the murder was committed, with the stupid but estimable Aunt Abbie. But I think I know - "
Miss Withers stopped bustling about with her broom. "You mean?"
"I mean the brotehr of Dana Waverly, that's who I mean. Charles Waverly, the distant relative and next male heir of the Stait family. He's a lawyer, and therefore in a position to know just what loot there would be in the Stait future."
"Lawyers usually have better ways of getting loot than committing murder for it, " Miss Withers suggested dryly. "They play it safe, as a rule."
(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)
The Inspector searched the mantel and under the carpet, as a matter of form, but there was no key anywhere. "Do your stuff, kid," he ordered.
The young operative became deadly serious as he went over the lock. His hands made a few deft motions, involving the use of a long coiled spring, a screwdriver, and the blade of a knife. Then he placed his shoulder against one side of the door frame his right foot against the other, and pressed inward
There was a sharp click, and then the door opened. Swarthout looked at his wristwatch. "One minute and forty-five seconds," he announced. "I wish the professor who flunked me in Mechanical Engineering could have seen that."
(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)
Piper gave the driver the Minetta Lane address. "What were you doing behind this cab when I came down?'
Swarthout looked innocent. "Nothing, Inspector. Nothing but passing the time away." There was the slightest accent on the word "passing."
"Oh, yeah? You're a fine example to the public, Swarthout. The crap-shooting detective, huh? Gambling in public!"
Swarthout took a pair of pink cubes from his pocket and rattled them lovingly. "I don't mind telling you in confidence, Inspector, that with these dice there isn't any gambling in it at all. I found 'em on Tony the Wop last week, and they take the chance out of games of chance."
(from Murder On Wheels, by Stuart Palmer)
