What else could you expect?

     When he returned, he found me examining the photographs on the wall. The one on which my eye was resting at the moment was a school football group, and it was not difficult to spot the identity of the juvenile delinquent holding the ball and sitting in the middle.

    "You?" I said.

    "That's me," he replied. "My last year at school. I skippered the side that season. That's old Scrubby Willoughby sitting next to me. Fast wing threequarter, but never would learn to give the reverse pass."

    "He wouldn't?" I said, shocked. I hadn't the remotest what he was talking about, but he had said enough to show me that this Willoughby must have been a pretty dubious character, and when he went on to tell me that poor old Scrubby had died of cirrhosis of the liver in the Federal Malay States, I wasn't really surprised. I imagine these fellows who won't learn to give the reverse pass generally come to a fairly sticky end.

(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Frogs? Yellow frogs?

     It was a moment fraught with embarrassment. It's bad enough to be caught by your host prowling about his house after hours even when said host is a warm admirer and close personal friend, and I have, I think, made it clear that Pop Bassett was not one of my fans. He could barely stand the sight of me by daylight, and I suppose I looked even worse to him at one o'clock in the morning.

    My feeling of having been slapped between the eyes with a custard pie was deepened by the spectacle of his dressing gown. He was a small man - you got the impression, seeing him, that when they were making magistrates there wasn't enough material left over when they came to him - and for some reason not easy to explain it nearly always happens that the smaller the ex-magistrate, the louder the dressing gown. His was a bright purple number with yellow frogs, and I am not deceiving my public when I say that it smote me like a blow, rendering me speechless.

(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Look deeper than the exterior

I can well imagine that a casual observer, if I had confided to him my qualms at the idea of being married to this girl, would have raised his eyebrows and been at a loss to understand, for she was undeniably an eyeful, being slim, svelte and bountifully equipped with golden hair and all the fixings. But where the casual observer would have been making his bloomer was in overlooking that squashy soupiness of hers, that subtle air she had of being on the point of talking baby-talk. She was the sort of girl who puts her hands over a husband's eyes, as he is crawling in to breakfast with a morning head, and says, "Guess who?"

(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A slow starter

 It is no secret in the circles in which he moves that Bertram Wooster, though as glamorous as one could wish when night has fallen and the revels get under way, is seldom a ball of fire at the breakfast table. Confronted with the eggs and b., he tends to pick cautiously at them, as if afraid they may leap from the plate and snap at him. Listless, about sums it up. Not much bounce to the ounce.

(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Doom and gloom

     The Hon. Galahad frowned. He sensed a lack of iinterest and sympathy. "What's the matter with you?" he demanded.

    "Nothing."

    "Then why are you looking like that?"

    "Like what?"

    "Pale and tragic, as if you'd just gone into Tattersall's and met a bookie you owed money to."

    "I am perfectly happy."

    The Hon. Galahad snorted. "Yes, radiant. I've seen fogs that were cheerier."

(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Prawns? What prawns?

     "Well, from now on there will be no more forbearance. Unless you restore that pig, I shall insert in my book every dashed thing I can remember about you - starting with our first meeting, when I came walking into Romano's and was introduced to you while you were walking round the supper-table with a soup tureen on your head and stick of celery in your hand, saying that you were a sentry outside Buckingham Palace. The world shall know you for what you are - the only man who was ever thrown out of the Cafe de l'Europe for trying to raise the price of a bottle of champagne by raffling his trousers at the main bar. And, what's more, I'll tell the full story of the prawns."

    A sharp cry escaped Sir Gregory. His face had turned a deep magenta. In these affluent days of his middle age, he always looked rather like a Regency buck who has done himself well for years among the flesh-pots. He now resembled a Regency buck who, in addition to being on the verge of apoplexy, has been stung in the leg by a hornet.

(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

It an epidemic!

"Now go and send her another telegram. Keep on sending telegrams. Leave nothing to chance. Send a dozen and pitch it strong. Say that Blandings Castle is ravaged with disease. Not merely scarlet fever. Scarlet fever and mumps. not to mention housemaid's knee, diabetes, measles, shingles, and the botts. We're on to a  big thing, my Susan. Let us push it along."

(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A detailed description of the battle

     Matters now began to move briskly. Waiter C, who rashly clutched the sleeve of Ronnie's coat, reeled back with a hand pressed to his right eye. Waiter D, a married man, contented himself with standing on the outskirts and talking Italian. But Waiter E, made of sterner stuff, hit Ronnie rather hard with a dish containing omelette aux champignons, and it was as the latter reeled beneath this buffet that there suddenly appeared in the forefront of the battle a figure wearing a gay uniform and almost completely concealed behind a vast moustache, waxed at the ends. It was the commissionaire from the street-door; and anybody who has ever been  bounced from a restaurant knows that commissionaires are heavy metal.

    This one, whose name was McTeague, and who had spent many lively years in the army before retiring to take up his present duties, had a grim face made of some hard kind of wood and the muscles of a village blacksmith. A man of action rather than words, he clove his way through the press in silence. Only when he reached the centre of the maelstrom did he speak. This was when Ronnie, leaping upon a chair the better to perform the operation, hit him on the nose. On receipt of this blow, he uttered the brief monosyllable "Ho!" and then, without more delay, scooped Ronnie into an embrace of steel and bore him towards the door, through which was now moving a long, large, leisurely policeman.

(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Like the dialogue in a Grade B-minus movie

     "You know that pig of your uncle's?"

    "What about it?"

    "It's gone."

    "Gone?"

    "Gone! said Hugo, rolling the word round his tongue. "I met the old boy half a minute ago, and he told me. It seems he went down to the pig-bin for a before-breakfast look at the animal and it wasn't there."

    "Wasn't there?"

    "Wasn't there."

    "How do you mean, wasn't there?"

    "Well, it wasn't. Wasn't there at all. It had gone.

    "Gone?"

    "Gone! It's room was empty and its bed had not been slept in."

    "Well, I'm dashed!" said Ronnie.

(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The story of the rat killing contest

 [This story is referred to several times in the Hon. Galahad Threepwood stories of Sir Pelham Wodehouse. I thought you might like to hear the full version, as found in Summer Lightning.]

"Let me tell you a little story about young Parsloe. One or two of us used to meet at the Black Footman in Gossiter Street in the old days - they've pulled it down now - and match our dogs against rats in the room behind the door. Well, I put my Towser, an admirable beast, up against young Parsloe's Banjo on one occasion for a hundred pounds a side. And when the night came and he was shown the rats, I'm dashed if he didn't just give a long yawn and roll over and go to sleep. I whistled him, called him - Towser, Towser. No good, fast asleep. And my firm belief has always been that young Parsloe took him aside just before the contest was to start and gave him about six pounds of steak and onions. Couldn't prove anything, of course, but I sniffed the dog's breath and it was like opening the kitchen door of a Soho chophouse on a summer night. That's the sort of man young Parsloe is."

Not very complimentary toward Grandma

     "So that's it, is it? Parsloe's pig-man going about offering three to one - against the form-book, I take it?"

    "Most decidedly. Pride of Matchingham was awarded second prize last year, but it is a quite inferior animal to the Empress."

    "Then you look after that pig of yours, Clarence," The Hon. Galahad spoke earnestly. "I see what this means. Parsloe's up to his old games and intends to queer the Empress somehow?"

    "Queer her?"

    "Nobble her. Or, if he can't do that, steal her."

    "You don't mean that."

    "I do mean it. The man's as slippery as a greased eel. He would nobble his grandmother if it suited his book. Let me tell you I've known young Parsloe for thirty years and I solemnly state that if his grandmother was entered in a competition for fat pigs and his commitments made it desirable for him to get her out of the way, he would dope her bran-mash and acorns without a  moment's hesitation."

(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

From the vine

     Brennan put his cigar on the edge of the bar, carefully, so as not to disturb the ash. "I should like to open a bottle of wine," he said.

    "'Of the first grape only,'" Fallon quoted.

    Brennan glanced up from the bottle he had taken from under the bar. "'A vine bears three grapes,'" he said, "'the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.'" He filled two glasses two-thirds full. "I believe it was Anacharsis who said that."

(from Fallon, by Louis L'Amour)

    

To see is to believe

 Yet even as he spoke, he knew he probably was wasting his time. To those who have lived a sheltered life, exposed to no danger or brutality, only the actual sight of something of the kind will convince. Each person views the world in the light of his own experience.

(from Fallon, by Louis L'Amour)

Marked for the butcher shop

     "There's something out there," he said in a minute, and he gestured toward the brush along the creek. "I figure it's a varmint of some kind. The critters can smell it, and they're spooky."

    When I was in the saddle, he added, "You watch that ol' blaze-face mossy-horn on the far side. He's got it in his head to run."

    "I know him," I said. "He's a trouble-maker. Next time the Indians come around hunting beef they're going to get him."

(from Chancy, by Louis L'Amour)

Really small town

 We followed the marshal out the door and he pointed to indicate the Doc's ffice. Nothing in this town was very far away. If you walked a hundred yards in any direction you'd be out on the prairie.

(from Chancy, by Louis L'Amour)

Only bad news

A man ramrodding a herd of mixed stuff has got to be a worrier. He has to worry about what might happen, so he will  be ready for it if it does happen; and the only thing he can be downright sure of is that if what he was afraid of doesn't happen, something else will.

(from Chancy, by Louis L'Amour)

Stock in trade

 I had come among them a stranger. I had bargained when they were desperate and afraid, and they hated me because I had not been afraid, and because their fear had driven them to surrender. But my willingness to fight had been my only stock in trade. It was all I had to sell, and had I been killed not one of them would have wasted a thought on me.

(from Chancy, by Louis L'Amour)

The guilty

 "It has been said that the guilty flee when no man pursueth, Mr. Talon, but the guilty often suspect others of knowing more than they do."

(from Rivers West, by Louis L'Amour)

Don't throw it!

     "I happened to be taking a caravan holiday in this neighborhood, Lady Constance, and finding myself near Market Blandings last night, I thought I would . . . ."

    "Why, of course! We should never have orgiven you if you had not come to see us. Should we Clarence?"

    "Eh?

    "I said, should we?"

    "Should we what?" said Lord Emsworth, who was still adjusting his mind.

    Lady Constance's lips tightened, and a moment passed during which it seemed always a fifty-fifty chance that a handsome silver ink-pot would fly through the air in the direction of her brother's head. But she was a strong woman. She fought down the impulse.

(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Watch out for those oboes!

 The advance guard of the company appeared, in the shape of a flock of musicians. They passed out of the stage door, first a couple of thirsty-looking flutes, then a group of violins, finally an oboe by himself with a scowl on his face. Oboes are always savage in captivity.

(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The soldier's rules

 When he was gone, Devereaux considered the possibilities for a few moments, then he lay down, pulled his blankets around him, and fell promptly to sleep. A good soldier eats when there is food, never stands when he can sit, and never stays awake when he can sleep - as long as it doesn't interfere with his duty.

(from Under the Sweetwater Rim, by Louis L'Amour)