I'm out of here!

     The attitude of people towards densely moustached strangers who are galloping up, shouting "Hey!" varies a good deal according to the individual. Joss Weatherby in such circumstances would have stood his ground and investigated the phenomenon. So, probably, would Napoleon, Joe Louis and Attila the Hun. Lord Holbeton was mdae of more neurotic stuff. The spectacle, acting upon his already enfeebled morale, was too much for him. Directing at the other a single horrified glance, he was off up the drive with a brisknes which would have put him immediately out of range of anything that was not a jack rabbit. And even a jack rabbit would have been extended.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

And he is just the man to do it

     Chibnall blew an airy smoke ring. With subtle cunning, he had contrived to work the conversation round to the exact point where he wanted it. His love, deep though it was, had never blinded him to the fact that what the modern young woman needed, for the discipline of her soul, was to be properly scored off and put in her place from time to time.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Poor, but tough

     There is no anguish so acute as that experienced by a woman of strong views on class distinctions, who, having lavished all the charm of her best manner on a supposed scion of the nobility, discovers that he is the latest addition to her domestic staff. And Mrs. Steptoe would undoubtedly have given eloquent expression to her feelings, had she not, just as she was about to begin, caught Joss's eye. It was a strong, steady eye, the eye of a man who for two years had given J. B. Duff look for look, and if not actually made him wilt at least confined him reasonably closely to the decencies of debate. It impressed Mrs. Steptoe. She could recognize personality when she saw it.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Endangered crooners

     "Why didn't he come himself?"

    It was a question which Sally had anticipated. "He isn't well."

    "What's the matter with him?"

    "He - er - he's got a sore throat."

    "I don't wonder. Does he still sing all the time?"

    "He sings quite a lot."

    "If you can call it singing. Sounds like gas escaping from a pipe. 'But only God can make a tree.' Bah! In a really civilized community crooners would be shot on sight."

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

 

For self-preservation

     The fact was that Mr. Duff, a devil of a fellow among his own sex, was terrified of women. He avoided them if possible, and when cornered by one without hope of escape always adopted the shrewd tactics of the caterpillar of the puss moth - which, we are told by an eminent authority, "not satisfied with Nature's provisions for its safety, makees faces at young birds and alarms them coniderably." That was why Mr. Duff's features were working. Nature, making provision for his safety, had given him bushy eyebrows and piercing eyes, and he threw in the faces as an extra.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

No matter what

     Moreover, though now a little subdued by the thought of her coming interview with Mr. Duff, she was a light-hearted girl and enjoyed simple, wholesome comedy. The prospect of watching Mr. Steptoe's reactions, when confronted with Joss, made a strong appeal to her.

    "Well, if you're really serious."

    "Of course, I'm serious," said Joss. As an alternative to having this girl pass from his life, he owuld have accepted office as the Claines Hall scullery maid. When love came to them, the Weatherbys did not count the cost.

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Coach Raveling's keepsake

     George Raveling was a college basketball coach at Washington State, Iowa, and USC at a time when there were very few black head coaches. 

    On August 28, 1963, as Martin Luther King Jr. waved goodbye to an audience of over 250,000 "March on Washington" participants, Raveling asked King if he could have the speech. King handed Raveling the original typewritten "I Have a Dream" pages. Raveling was on the podium with King at that moment, having volunteered to provide security. He still has the original, and has been offered more than three million dollars for the speech.

What hams have wrought

     "Write? You don't seem to understand the position. Fifteen years ago, when I met Jimmy Duff and fell for his smooth city ways, I was a young, idealistic girl, all sentiment and romance. This sentiment and romance he blunted for ever with these foul hams of his. He used to take me out in the moonlight and tell me what gave them that nutty flavour. He would wait till the band was playing "Traumerei" and then describe the process of curing. And now, when after all these weary years I've a chance to get my own back, you tell me to write? Write indeed! I'm going to call at his office and look him in the eye and slap this ham down on his desk and watch him curl up at the edges."

(from Quick Service, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Get on with it

     "Timid devotion gets a lover nowhere. I was chatting with Miss Bean this morning, and she was telling me that she had a good deal of trouble at one time with Constable Potter, owing to his devotion being so timid. She says that in the early days of his courtship he used to walk her out and chew his mustache and talk about the situation in China, but no real action. So one evening she said, 'Come on, my lad, get on with it,' and he got on with it. And after that everything went like clockwork."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Slippery uncle

     "How did you articulate when you spoke the words 'Brabazon-Plank'? Distinctly?"

    "Yes."

    "You didn't mumble?"

    "No."

    "So you could say that what you had really said was 'Smith' or "Knachtbull-Huguessen'?"

    "No."

    Lord Ickenham reflected. "Well, then, what we must do is to tell him that I am our Plank's brother."

    "Do you think you could get away with that?"

    "There are no limits to what I can get away with when I am functioning properly."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Good at impersonations

     "You'll call yourself something else?" he said, for he was a man who liked to approach these things from every angle.

    "Precisely."

    "But - "

    "I never like that word 'But.'"

    "You couldn't get away with it."

    Lord Ickenham laughed lightly. "My dear fellow, at The Cedars, Mafeking Road, in the suburb of Mitching Hill last spring I impersonated in a single afternoon and with complete success not only an official from the bird shop, come to clip the claws of the parrot, but Mr. Roddis, lessee of The Cedars, and a Mr. J. G. Bulstrode, a resident of the same neighborhood. It has been a lasting grief to me that I was given no opportunity of impersonating the parrot, which I am convinced I should have done on broad, artistic lines."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just moving in

     All through the narrative, Lord Ickenham had been reviving like a watered flower. His air, as it reached its culminating point, was that of one hearing tidings of great joy.

       "Disaster?" he said exuberantly "What do you mean, disaster? This is the most admirable thing that could have happened. I now have something I can get my teeth into. It is no longer a question merely of effecting an entry into the house, but of getting myself established there. And if there is one thing I enjoy more than another, it is getting established in other people's houses. It brings the roses to my cheeks and tones my whole system."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Haid

     Occasionally in books you will see the word "haid," generally spoken by Southern or Western characters. Then, when you hear the word pronounced in movies, it is generally pronouned "hade," rhyming with "shade." That is ludicrous, of course. I have NEVER heard anyone from the South pronounce it like that. That spelling is intended to demonstrate that the diphthong is to be drawn out, like those of us from this area invariably do. Thus it would be pronouned "hay-yid." But never "hade."

Nice, but not too bright

     "Still, there it is. So you and Pongo need not have split up at all."

    "No."

    "It was silly of him to take your breaking the engagement so seriously. My dear wife broke ours six times, and each time I came up smiling."

    "I ought to have remembered that Pongo does take things seriously."

    "Yes. A saintly character, but muttonheaded."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Runaway earl

     "How wonderful of you to come. And how brave! How did you manage to sneak away?"

    "What extraordinary verbs you employ, child."

    "Well, didn't Aunt Jane say she would scalp you with a blunt knife next time you were A.W.O.L.?"

    "In her playful way she did say something of the sort. Odd, that craving of hers to keep me vegetating in the country. But your honorary Aunt Jane is at the moment on her way to the West Indies. This has eased the situation a good deal. I thought it a good opportunity of broadening my mind."

    "Or playing hooky."

    "That is another way of putting it, of course."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse. The uncle inplied in the conversation above is, of course, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham, the world's foremost proponent of spreading sweetness and light.)

The fete must go on

     "The curate. You know Mr. Brotherhood, the curate. That nice young man with the pimples. He has gone and got measles, and I was relying on him to judge the babies."

    "What babies?"

    "The bonny babies, At the fete."

    A word about this fete. It was the high spot of Ashendon Oakshott's social year, when all that was bravest and fairest in the village assembled in the manor grounds and made various kinds of whoppee. Races were run. country dances danced, bonny babies judged in order of merit in the big tent and tea and buns consumed in almost incredible quantities. Picture a blend of the Derby and a garden party at Buckingham Palace, add Belshazzar's Feast, and you have the Ashenden Oakshott fete.

    One can readily appreciate, therefore, Lady Bostock's concern at the disaster which had occured. A lady of the manor, with an important fete coming along and the curate in bed with measles, is in the distressing position of an impresario whose star fails him a couple of days before the big production or a general whose crack regiment gets lumbago on the eve of the battle.

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A wife with a sense of humor

     What you need is a jolly, lively wife to take you out of yourself, the sort of wife who would set booby traps for the bishop when he came to spend the night. I don't suppose this Hermione Bostock of yours ever made so much as an apple-pie bed in her life. I'd give her a miss. Send her an affectionate telegram saying you've changed your mind and it's all off. I have a telegraph form in my study."

    A look of intense devoutness came over Pongo's face. "For your information, Uncle Fred, wild horses wouldn't make me break my engagement."

    "Most unlikely they'll ever try."

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Buffy-Porson

     In his novel, Uncle Dynamite, Sir Pelham Wodehouse makes reference to a two-seater car called a Buffy-Porson that Pongo Twistleton drives. The picture below is actually supposed to be of Sir Pelham. I am not sure that the car is actually a Buffy-Porson, but it at least would be of the same general style, although it looks like it only has one seat.

Not much excitement

     Under normal conditions there is about the station of Ashenden Oakshott little or nothing to rouse the emotions and purge the soul with pity and terror. Once you have seen the stationmaster's whiskers, which are of a Victorian bushiness and give the impression of having been grown under glass, you have drained it of all it has to offer in the way of thrills, unless you are one of those easily excited persons who can find drama in the spectacle of a small porter wrestling with a series of large milk cans. "Placid" is the word that springs to the lips.

(from Uncle Dynamite, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Lonely echoes

The corral where the cattle had beengathered looked lonely now, and the fire where their meals had been cooked was only long-dead ashes and blackened stones. There is nothing so flolorn as a deserted and long-dead campfire where one has been with friends.

(from Trouble Shooter, by Louis L'Amour) 

Wild cattle

     The wild cattle of the brush country had lost all domestication. They lived for the wilderness, and he had known of cases where, when removed from the brush, the cattle simply lay down and died, refusing to be driven despite torture and beating. And they were utterly savage, fighting anything that came into their path, possessed of the speed of a deer and the agility of a panther. He who has not encountered wild cattle in their native habitat can have no idea of their nature.

(from Trouble Shooter, by Louis L'Amour)

Invisible butler

     He disappeared into the library, and Bill turned to Jeeves, who had once again effaced himself. In times of domestic crisis, Jeeves had the gift, possessed by all good butlers, of creating the illusion that he was not there. He was standing now at the extreme end of the room, looking stuffed.

(from Ring For Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)