Lemon-colored insanity

     Just as every dog is permitted one bite without having its sanity questioned, so, if you consider it in a broad-minded way, may every man be allowed to throw one flower-pot. But let the thing become a habit, and we look askance. This strange hobby of his appeared to be growing on Baxter like a drug, and Lord Emsworth did not like it at all. He had never before suspected his secretary of an unbalanced mind, but now he mused, as he tiptoed cautiously to the window, that the Baxter sort of man, the energetic restless type, was just the kind that does go off his head. Just some such calamity as this, his lordship felt, he might have foreseen. Day in, day out, Rupert Baxter had been exercising his brain ever since he had come to the castle - and now he had gone and sprained it. Lord Emsworth peeped timidly out from behind a curtain.

    His worst fears were realized. It was Baxter, sure enough; and at ousled, wild-eyed Baxter incredibly clad in lemon-coloured pyjamas.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Well, Freddie?

     The voice, which trembled throatily, was that of the Hon. Freddie; and her first look at him told Eve, an expert diagnostician, that he was going to propose to her again.

    "Well, Freddie?" said Eve resignedly.

    The Hon. Frederick Threepwood was a young man who was used to hearing people say, "Well, Freddie?" resignedly when he appeared. His father said it; his Aunt Constance said it; all his other aunts and uncles said it. Widely differing personalities in every other respect, they all said, "Well, Freddie?" resignedly directly they caught sight of him.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

To be avoided, if possible

     She was alone. It is a sad but indisputable fact that in this imperfect world Genius is too often condemned to walk alone - if the earthier members of the community see it coming and have time to duck.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

He can't help it

     "Why do you think that cheery old Baxter, a delightful personality if ever I knew one, suspects me?"

    "It's the way he looks at you."

    "I know what you mean, but I attribute no importance to it. As far as I have been able to ascertain during my brief visit, he looks at everybody and everything in precisely the same way. Only last night at dinner I obserfed him glaring with keen mistrust at about as blameless and innocent a plate of clear soup as was ever dished up. He then proceeded to shovel it down with quite undisguised relish. So possibly you are all wrong about his motive for looking at me like that. It may be admiration."

    "Well, I don't like it."

    "Nor, from an aesthetic point of view, do I. But we mut bear these things manfully. We mut remind ourselves that it is Baxter's misfortune rather than his fault that he looks like a dyspeptic lizard."

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Never argue with the Scotch

 "'Certainly, McAllister,' I said, 'you may have your gravel path if you wish it. I make but one provision, that you construct it over my dead body. Only when I am weltering in my blood on the threshold of that yew alley shall you disturb one inch of my beautiful moss. Try to remember, McAllister,' I said, still quite cordially, 'that you are not laying out a recreational ground in a Glasgow suburb - you are proposing to make an eyesore of what is possibly the most beautiful nook in one of the finest and oldest gardens in the United Kingdom.' He made some repulsive Scotch noise at the back of his throat, and there the matter rests."

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The reason for the spelling

     "The same is Psmith. P-Smith."

    "Peasmith, sir?"

    "No, no. P-s-m-i-t-h. I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith. But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced. Smythe I look on as a cowardly evasion, nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name on in front y means of a hyphen. So I decided to adopt the Psmith. The P, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan. You follow me?"

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A worthy weapon

 From hard-won experience, Gordon Carlisle knew what his loved one could do with a vase. And this was a particularly large, hard, thick, solid vase, in every way superior to the one which a year ago she had bounced on his head. It was one of those vases which a Zulu chieftain would have been perfectly satisfied to make shift with while his knobkerrie was being cleaned at the club-maker's. The impact of it on a skull even as tough as that of Mr. Slattery could scarcely fail to produce results, especially when wielded by one who believed in taking the full Vardon swing and getting plenty of follow-through.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

One just never knows

     "Yes. But apparently when he was doing some burgling the other night you planted him out on a window-sill and he didn't like it."

    "Goosh!" The Senator paused for a moment, aghast. "You don't mean that was the fellow?"

    "Yes."

    "And he's sore?"

    "Very sore. He says if you're drowning he'll throw you a flat-iron, but outside of that he doesn't want anything to do with you."

    Senator Opal fermented silently. How true it is, he was feeling, that we never know how devastating the results of our most trivial actions may be. Just because he had done an ordinary everyday thing like putting a burglar on a window-sill, the sort of thing one does and forgets about next minute, ruin stared him in the face. He mourned, as many a stout fellow had mourned before him, over the irrevocability of the past.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Busted up, we did

 Statisticians, who have gone carefully into the figures - the name of Schwertfeger of Berlin is one that springs to the mind - inform us that of young men who have just received a negative answer to a proposal of marriage (and with these must, of course, be grouped those whose engagements have been broken off) 6.08 per cent clench their hands and stare silently before them, 12.02 take the next train to the Rocky Mountains and shoot grizzlies, while 11.07 sit down at their desks and become modern novelists.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Glad to see you - NOT

 The emotions of a young man who, separated from the beautiful girl to whom his troth is plighted, suddenly finds himself quite unexpectedly reunited to her ought to be unmixedly ecstatic. Packy's could scarcely have been so described. In a situation which has furnished a congenial theme for more than one poet, he merely felt as if some muscular acquaintance had just punched him solidly on the nose.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

This author is mad at the female world?

 On paper, Blair Eggleston was bold, cold, and ruthless. Like so many of our younger novelists, his whole tone was that of a disillusioned, sardonic philanderer who had drunk the wine-cup of illicit love to its dregs but was always ready to fill up again and have another. There were passages in some of his books, notably Worm i' the Root, and Offal, which simply made you shiver, so stark was their cynicism, so brutal the force with which they tore away the vails and revealed Woman as she is.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Legs by themselves?

    Gardens, gay with flowers, lay before Mr. Carlisle, and beyond them woods and the Breton quaintness of the home farm: while above him, as he raised his eyes, there was a blue sky, flecked with little clouds; a few of the local birds going about their business; an insect or two; a couple of butterflies; and a pair of legs encased in grey trousers and terminating in two shoes of generous dimensions.

    It was these last that enchained his attention. The spectacle of legs where no legs should be is always an arresting one. Mr. Carlisle, drinking them in, was frankly nonplussed. Rapidly running over in his mind the topography of the house, he discovered that their owner, if they had an owner and were not simply a stray pair of legs which had just been left about, must be sitting on the window-sill of the bedroom occupied by Senator Opal.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Stuck on a ledge

 There followed one of those awkward periods which occur when a man who is compelled to confine himself entirely to grimaces is endeavoring to convey his thoughts to a second party who is so overcome with amazement that he would scarcely be in a position to understand the plainest speech. Mr. Slattery contorted his features. Mr. Carlisle continued to gape. It was only at the end of about five minutes, just after Mr. Slattery had nearly dislocated his lower jaw in a particularly eloquent passage, that the marveling Confidence Trick artist realized that what his friend was silently appealing for was a ladder.

Speak louder, please

 Any feminine voice speaking at such a moment would have startled Mr. Carlisle. What rendered this one so peculiarly disintegrating was the fact that he recognized it. Indeed, one might say that it had been ringing in his ears ever since the day, twelve months ago, when it had called him a two-timing piece of cheese - a remark which had been followed almost immediately by the descent on his frontal orbital bone of a large china vase.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Shut up about my old man!

 In these last few days, Blair Eggleston had undoubtedly not been showing himself at his best. Constant association with Senator Opal had induced in him a rather unattractive peevishness. Querulousness and self-pity had marked him for their own. At their stolen meetings, when Jane would have preferred to talk of love, he showed a disposition to turn the conversation to the subject of his personal misfortunes and keep it there. And it is trying for a sensitive and romantic girl, when she comes flitting through the laurels in the quiet evenfall to join her lover, to find that all he proposes to discuss is her father's habit of throwing oatmeal at him in the bedroom.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Better than Head and Shoulders

 "So where do we go from here?" asked Packy. "All I am trying to do is to save you unpleasantness. If you wish me to leave, of course, I'll leave at once. But in that case how about Mrs. Gedge? Won't she write to the Vicomtesse asking what has become of her son? Of course she will. The whole story will then come out, and I don't see how the police can fail to track you down. And after that . . . Well, you can say what you like about the guillotine - the only known cure for dandruff and so on - but nobody's going to persuade me that you will enjoy it."

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

How to be a valet

     "But I don't know how to be a valet!"

    "It's quiet easy," Packy assured him. "A fellow with a brain like yours will pick it up in a minute. Just fold and brush and brush and fold and remember to say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir' and 'indeed, sir?' and very good, sir.' Oh, and one thing. Be very careful how you remove spots from the clothing. I knew a man who was fired for removing a spot from his employer's clothing."

    "What a shame!' said Jane. "Why?"

    "It was a ten-spot," explained Packy.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Keeping things interesting

     "He does the noises off."

    "How do you mean, the noises off?"

    "Well, when they have a sketch of something where they have to have noises, Blair makes them."

    "I get you. You mean, somebody says, 'Hurrah, girls, here comes the Royal Bodyguard!' and Blair goes tramp, tramp, tramp."

    "Yes. And all sorts of other noises. He's awfully clever at it."

    Packy nodded.

    "I can see why you want to marry him. The home can never be dull if at any moment the husband is able to imitate a motor horn or the mating-cry of a boll weevil."

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Tough egg

     "I wonder how Eggleston is getting on. About now, I should imagine, he is leaning on the bell and your father is shouting, 'Come on! Come on! Come on!' in that curious way of his that always remins me of a gorilla thumping its chest."

    Jane knitted her brow anxiously.

    "Father's a pretty hard egg, isn't he?"

    "It is not for me to criticize your ather," said Packy primly, "but I can tell you this - if he ever asks me to come down a lonely alley with him to see his stamp collection I shall refuse with considerable firmness."

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not feeling well?

 Blair Eggleston's was a face which even at normal times had always a certain intellectual pallor. As he listened now, this pallor became more pronounced. It was as if the young novelist had been cast to play the Demon King in a pantomine and had assumed for the purpose a light green make-up. His lower jaw drooped feebly, like a dying lily.

(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)