Nothing wrong with being a teapot

    It was not so long ago, she reflected with pride, that she had induced Ruth to refuse to marry Basil Milbank - a considerable feat, he being a young man of remarkable personal attractions and a great match in every way. Mrs. Porter's objection to him was that his father had died believing to the last that he was a teapot.

    There is nothing evil or degrading in believing oneself a teapot, but it argues a certain inaccuracy of the thought processes, and Mrs. Porter had used all her influence with Ruth to make her reject Basil. It was her success that first showed her how great that influence was. She had come now to look on Ruth's destiny as something for which she was personally responsible - a fact which was noted and resented by others, in particular Ruth's brother Bailey, who regarded his aunt with a dislike and suspicion akin to that which a stray dog feels towards the boy who saunters towards him with a tin can in his hand.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The truth is a rare thing

     "Been waiting long?"

    "Long enough to have eaten if I'd thought of it. As it was, all I got was the coffee."

    That made the second lie. She had not been here for some time, and she had not come right here from home. He tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the visit to the Upshaw Building was so much a habit that she did not consider it. Still, it was out of her way in coming here.

    He wanted to believe her. Maybe that's why cops get cynical - they are lied to so often.

(from "I Hate To Tell His Widow," by Louis L'Amour)

Thought he was too smart

 Pete Merrano was like all of his kind who live by fear and terror. When that failed, they're backed into a corner. He had been sure he would win. He had still been sure when things started going against him because he simply believed he was too smart. He had forgotten the old adage that cops can make many mistakes, a crook need only make one.

(from "Stay Out of My Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)

A weird situation

     "Are you Mr. Ramsey?" He neither spoke nor blinked, and I stepped pat the old woman and stopped abruptly. I was staring into the eyes of a dead man.

    Turning, overcome with horror, I looked at the old woman who was puttering among some dirty dishes. "Don't mind him," she said. "Earl was never one for talking. Only when he takes the notion."

    My skin crawled. She turned her head and stared at me with expressionless eyes. Gray hair straggled about a face that looked old enough to have worn out two bodies, and her clothing was drab, misshapen, and soiled. She fumbled at her pocket, staring at me.

    It gave me the creeps. The hot, stuffy room and that aged and obviously imbecilic woman and her dead son.

    Stepping past the table, I saw the knife. It had been driven into the left side of his back, driven up from below as he sat at the table, and driven to the hilt. I touched the hand of Earl Ramsey. It was cold.

    The old woman as puttering among the dishes, unaware and unconcerned.

(from "Stay Out of My Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)

A resolute lady

     "Who are you?" she repeated.

    "Let's say that I am an old army friend of Sam Bradley's."

    Her eyes hardened. "Oh? So you admit you're one of them?" Before I could reply, she said, "I'll just call the police."

    "It might be the best idea. But why don't you pout that gun down and let' talk this over. Sam left word he wanted to see me, and if you're a friend of his, we should compare notes. When he said he was in trouble, I hurried right over."

    "I'll bet you did! Now back against the wall. I am going to use the telephone, and if you have any doubts whatever I'll use this gun, just start something."

    I had no doubts.

(from "Stay Out of my Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)

    

Quite a scrap

     He had been coming in, and I used his impetus. He went over flying and hit the table in front of me with a crash; the table collapsed like a sick accordion and with about the same sound. Being on my knees, I grabbed the legs of the nearest man with Milly and jerked hard. His head hit the table when he fell, and I was up fast to see Milly break away and the other man clawing at his hip.

    It was a bad move, leaving him as open as a Memphis crap game, and I threw my right down the groove with everything on it but my shoelaces. When a man grabs suddenly at his hip, his face automatically comes forward. His did, and brother, it was beautiful!

    His face came forward as if it had a date with my fist, and it was a date they kept. You could have heard the smack of that fist clear into the street, and his feet went from under him as if they'd been jerked from behind. He went down to all fours. Naturally, I didn't kick him. In police reports that might not look good, so when I sort of bent over him, my knee sort of banged into his temple. It was what might have been termed a fortuitous accident.

(from "With Death in his Corner," by Louis L'Amour)

She grew up!

     "If you can help me," I said, "it would mean a lot. Garzo was my pal."

    "Sure, I know. I'm Mildred Casey, remember? I lived down the block from Rock's old man. You two used to fix my bike."

    That made me look again. Blue eyes, the ghosts of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and shabby clothes. An effort to be lively with nothing much to be lively or happy about, but great courage. She still had that, with a fine sort of pride. There was hurt in her eyes where her heart showed, eyes that had kept looking at men wondering if this was the right one.

(from "With Death in His Corner," by Louis L'Amour)

Boot Hill

     "You won't see the town until we get close."

    "Near that mesa?"

    "Right up against it. Small town, about four hundred people when they're all home. Being off the state highway, no tourists ever go there. Nothin' to see, anyway."

    "No boot hill?" Nearly all of the little mining towns in this section have a boot hill, and from the look of them, shooting up your neighbors must have been the outstanding recreation in the old days.

    "Oh, sure. Not many in this one, though. About fifteen or twenty with markers, but they buried most of them without any kind of a slab. This boot hill couldn't hold a candle to Pioche. Over there they buried seventy-five before the first one died of natural causes.

(from "The Hills of Homicide," by Louis L'Amour)

Not an excuse, but closer than some

    From the beginning he had been inclined to sympathize with the financier who was writhing in the net cast about him by an unscrupulous blackmailer. Of all the crimes in the book he detested blackmail most, and it had been difficult to work up any real feeling about Sara Morton's death since learning of her attempted extortion scheme.

    True, blackmail didn't excuse murder in the eyes of the law, but in Harsh's case, considering his enormous loss if she exposed him, it was a pretty fair excuse.    

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

Elaborate preparations

     "I want to handle this so you'll know I haven't double-crossed you no matter what happens. The Golden Cock bar will be crowded, and I'll mingle in the thickest of the crowds. The police may tail me and be watching. Don't speak to me or give yourself away in any way. Have a brief note wadded up to slip into my right hand, telling me where to meet you. I'll stay in plain sight after you give it to me, and won't communicate with anyone until I go out to my car and read the note. You can follow me to make sure I'm not being tailed. Then you'll know I'm on the level." 

    Shayne paused, feeling uncertain, yet hopeful. He knew it wasn't very good, but it was the best he could think of on the spur of the moment.

    "That sounds like a lot of melodramatic hocus-pocus," his caller complained.

    "That's the way it has to be if you want to see me tonight," he said flatly. "At the Golden Cock in half an hour." He cradled the receiver before the man could make further protests.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne," by Brett Halliday)

Bluffing his way

     "I think I know your name," Shayne lied tranquilly.

    "I assure you that I did not kill her, Shayne," His voice broke on a falsetto key like the changing voice of a teenaged boy.

    "But you have no alibi for before seven?" Shayne said.

    "Precisely. And even though that alibi is sufficient, you can readily understand that a police investigation would bring the whole story to light . . . and ruin me."

    "Naturally," Shayne scowled heavily, wondering how long he could keep the man talking without giving away the fact that he hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne," by Brett Halliday)

It wasn't suicide

     "Sara Morton is dead. She was evidently dead when you and Beatrice and I tried to rouse her around nine o'clock in her hotel room."

    "Suicide?"

    "I said murder, Mike," Gentry reminded him.

    "But you didn't say Sara Morton."

    "Gentry glanced up at Shayne with eyes like streaked granite. "Suicides don't jab a pair of long-bladed shears into the jugular and then go in the bathroom to wash the blood off the weapon, carry it back in the room and then lie down to die. Not without dropping a little blood along the way they don't."

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

How to stop the tears?

 Her head rested against the reporter's bony shoulder and his arm was around her. Tears streamed down her face, and Rourke's slaty eyes held the bewildered look of a man who had failed to stop a woman from crying.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

I could do with less of those kinds of compliments

     "It was like you to say that, Bertie. I respect you for it."

    "Oh, no."

    "Yes. You have a splendid, chivalrous soul."

    "Not a bit."

    "Yes, you have. You remind me of Cyrano."

    "Who?"

    "Cyrano de Bergerac."

    "The chap with the nose?"

    "Yes."

    I can't say I was any too pleased. I felt the old beak furtively. It was a big on the prominent side, perhaps, but, dash it, not in the Cyrano class. It began to look as if the next thing this girl would do would be to compare me to Schnozzle Durante.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Risky business

 It was a dashed tricky thing, of course, to have to decide on the spur of the moment. I was reading in the paper the other day about hose birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Chandler

 In fact, I and the corn chandler, who was looking a bit flagged, I thought, as if he had had a hard morning chandling the corn, were beginning to doze lightly when things suddenly brisked up, bringing Gussie into the picture for the first time.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A corn chandler was a corn merchant. The earliest use dates back to the late 1600s.

Seventh grade boys on a warm day

     The grammar school at Market Snodsbury had, I understand, been built somewhere in the year 1416, and, as with so many of these ancient foundations, there still seemed to brood over its Great Hall, where the afternoon's festivities were to take place, not a little of the fug of the centuries. It was the hottest day of the summer, and though somebody had opened a tenative window or two, the atmosphere remained distinctive and individual.

    In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The air was sort of heavy and langourous, if you know what I mean, with the scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[This passage brings to mind so vividly many scenes of yesteryear. There is no sensory experience quite like that of being trapped in close quarters with a group of seventh grade boys who have been playing outside on a warm day. Ah, the "scent of Young England," or any other place, for that matter.]

Looking at Uncle Tom

 Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantelpiece. I've tried to reason with Aung Dehlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (a) to burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it's good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only.

"Turn it to the wall, if it hurts you, Tuppy," I said gently.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Moth-eaten bulldog

     He came listlessly into the room, and I was pained to observe that a night's rest had effected no improvement in the unhappy wreck's appearance. Indeed, I should have said, if anything, that he was looking rather more moth-eaten than when I had seen him last. If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me.

    "Stap my vitals, Tuppy, old corpse," I said, concerned, "you're looking pretty blue around the rims."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not the best approach

 No matter how much of a twitter he was in, he should have had sense enough to see that he was throwing a spanner into the works. No girl, when she has been led to expect that a man is about to pour forth his soul in a fervour or passion, like to find him suddenly shelving the whole topic in favour of an address on aquatic Salamandridae.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Go drown yourself!

     "Good morning, sir," said Jeeves. "Mr. Fink-Nottle is not feeling well." 

    Nor was I. Gussie had begun to make low, bubbling noise, and I could no longer disguise it from myself that something must have gone seriously wrong with the works. I mean, I know marriage is a pretty solemn business and the realization that he is in for it frequently churns a chap up a bit, but I had never come across a case of a newly-engaged man taking it on the chin quite so completely as this.

    Gussie looked up. His eye was dull. He clutched the thatch.

    "Goodbye, Bertie," he said, rising. I seemed to spot an error.

    "You mean 'Hullo,' don't you?"

    "No, I don't. I mean goodbye. I'm off."

    "Off where?

    "To the kitchen garden. To drown myself."

    "Don't be an ass."

    "I'm not an ass . . . Am I an ass, Jeeves?"

    "Possibly a little injudicious, sir."

    "Drowning myself, you mean?

    "Yes, sir."

    "You think, on the whole, not drown myself?"

    "I should not advocate it, sir."

    "Very well, Jeeves. I accept your ruling. After all, it would be unpleasant for Mrs. Travers to find a swollen body floating in her pond."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

 

Spare us your solutions

     "Perhaps you understand now why I want you to go and jump in that pond. I might have known that some hideous disaster would s trike this house like a thunderbolt if once you wriggled your way into it and started trying to be clever."

    Harsh words, of course, as from aunt to nephew, but I bore her no resentment. No doubt, if you looked at it from a certain angle, Bertram might be considered to have made something of a floater.

    "I am sorry."

    "What's the good of being sorry?"

    "I acted for what I deemed the best."

    "Another time try acting for the worst. Then we may possibly escape with a mere flesh wound."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

In love with Her?!

     Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature's final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him sell, and could not have felt more deeply involved in the success of his wooing if I, and not he, had been the bloke under the ether.

    The thought that by this time he might quite easily have completed the preliminary pour parlers and be deep in an informal discussion of honeymoon plans, was very pleasant to me.

    Of course, considering the sort of girl Madeline Bassett was - stars and rabbits and all that, I mean - you might say that a sober sadness would have been more fitting. But in these matters you have got to realize that tastes differ. The impulse of right-thinking men might be to run a mile when they saw the Bassett, but for some reason she appealed to the depths in Gussie, so that was that.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not his favorite female companion

It was not until I had reached the drawing-room and was enabled to take a square look at the Bassett that I found the debonair gaiety with which I had embarked on this affair beginning to wane a trifle. Beholding her at close range like this, I suddenly became cognizant of what I was in for. The thought of strolling with this rummy specimen undeniably gave me a most unpleasant sinking feeling. I could not but remember how often, when in her company at Cannes, I had gazed dumbly at her, wishing that some kindly motorist in a racing car would ease the situation by coming along and ramming her amidships. As I have already made abundantly clear, this girl was not one of my most congenial buddies.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

How to talk to a blonde

     "Dash it, there are hundreds of things you can say. Talk about the sunset."

    "The sunset?"

    "Certainly. Half the married men you meet began by talking about the sunset."

    "But what can I say about the sunset?"

    "Well, Jeeves got off a good one the other day. I met him siring the dog in the park one evening, and he said, 'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, sir, and all the air a solemn stillness holds.' You might use that."

    "What sort of landscape?"

    "Glimmering. G for 'gastritis,' L for 'lizard' - "

    "Oh, glimmering? Yes, that's not bad. Glimmering landscape, solemn stillness. . . . Yes, I call that pretty good."

    "You could then say that you have often thought that the stars are God's daisy chain."

    "But I haven't."

    "I dare say not. But she has. Hand her that one, and I don't see how she can help feeling that you are a twin soul."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Rubber duckie therapy

     After I had been splashing about in the porcelain for a bit, composure began to return. I have always found that in moments of heart-bowed-downness there is nothing that calms the bruised spirit like a good go at soap and water. I don't say I actually sang in the tub, but there were times when it was a mere spin of the coin whether I would do so or not.

    The spiritual anguish induced by that tactless speech had become noticeably lessened.

    The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchambr much more the old merry Bertram.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just stifle yourself!

     "Bertie," said Aunt Dahlia, and her manner truck me as febrile, "lay of, lay off! For pity's sake, lay off. I know these plans of yours. I suppose you want to shove Angela into the lake and push young Glossop in after her to save her life, or something like that."

    "Nothing of the kind."

    "It's the sort of thing you would do."

    "My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you."

    "No thanks."

    "I say to myself - "

    "But not to me."

    "Do listen for a second."

    "I won't."

    "Right ho, then. I am dumb."

    "And have been from a child."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Why rich men are rich

     "I'll tell you, Bertie. Up till now, when these subsidies were required, I have always been able to come to Tom in the gay, confident spirit of the only child touching an indulgent father for chocolate cream. But he's just had a demand from the income tax people for an additional fifty-eight pounds, one and threepence, and all he's been talking about since I got back has been ruin and the sinister trend of socialistic legislation and what will become of us all."

    I could readily believe it. This Tom has a peculiarity I've noticed in other very oofy men. Nick him for the paltriest sum, and he lets out a squawk you can hear at Land's End. He has the stuff in gobs, but he hates giving it up.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The right connections

     "Gussie," I said, smiling paternally, "it was a lucky day for you when Bertram Wooster interested himself in your affairs. As I foresaw from the start, I can fix everything. This afternoon you shall go to Brinkley Court, as an honored guest."

    He quivered like a mousse. I suppose it must be rather a thrilling experience for the novice to watch me taking hold.

    "But Bertie, you don't mean you know these Traverses?"

    "They are my Aunt Dahlia."

    "My gosh!"

    "You see now," I pointed out, "how lucky you were to get me behind you. You go to Jeeves, and what does he do? He dresses you up in scarlet tights and one of the foulest false beards of my experience, and sends you off to fancy-dress balls. Result, agony of spirit and no progress. I then take over and put you on the right lines. Could Jeeves have got you into Brinkley Court? Not a chance. Aunt Dahlia isn't his aunt. I merely mention thee things."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Jeeves's remedy

     I have had occasion, I fancy, to speak before now of these pick-me-ups of Jeeves's and their effect on a fellow who is hanging to life by a thread on the morning after. What they consist of, I couldn't tell you. He says some kind of sauce, the yolk of a raw egg and a dash of pepper, but nothing will convince me that the thing doesn't go much deeper than that. Be that as it may, however, the results of swallowing one are amazing.

    For perhaps the split part of a second nothing happens. It is as though all Nature waited breathlessly. Then, suddenly, it is as if the Last Trump had sounded and Judgement Day set in with unusual severity.

    Bonfires burst out in all parts of the frame. The abdomen becomes heavily charged with molten lava. A great wind seems to blow through the world, and the subject is aware of something resembling a steam hammer striking the back of the head. During this phase, the ears ring loudly, the eyeballs rotate and there is a tingling about the brow.

    And then, just as you are feeling that you ought to ring up your lawyer and see that your affairs are in order before it is too late, the whole situation seems to clarify. The wind drops. The ears cease to ring. Birds twitter. Brass bands start playing. The sun comes up over the horizon with a jerk.

    And a moment later all you are conscious of is a great peace.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Peham Wodehouse)

A food crank

 "Laura Pyke," said young Bingo with intense bitterness, "is a food crank, curse her. She says we all eat too much and eat it too quickly and, anyway, ought not to be eating it at all but living on parsnips and similar muck. And Rosie, instead of telling the woman not to be a fathead, gazes at her in wide-eyed admiration. taking it in through the pores. The result is that the cuisine of this house has been shot to pieces, and I am starving on my feet. Well, when I tell you that it's weeks since a beefsteak pudding raised its head in the home, you'll understand what I mean."

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[I have been living with food cranks all my life, but I never knew the term to apply to them. I had always called them "health food nuts."]

Women!

     I was suffering from a considerable strain of the old nerves at the moment, of course, and, looking back, it may be that I was too harsh; but the way I felt in that dark, roosting hour was that you can say what you like, but the more a thoughtful man has to do with women, the more extraordinary it seems to him that such a sex should be allowed to clutter up the earth.

    Women, the way I looked at it, simply wouldn't do. Take the females who were mixed up in this present business. Aung Agatha, to start with, better known as the Pest of Pont Street, the human snapping-turtle. Aunt Agatha's closest friend, Miss Mapleton, of whom I can only say that one the single occasion on which I had met her she had struck me as just the sort of person who would be Aunt Agatha's closest friend. Bobbie Wickham, a girl who went about the place letting the pure in heart in for the sort of thing I was doing now. And Bobbie Wickham's cousin Clementina, who, instead of sticking sedulously to her studied and learning to be a good wife and mother, spent the springtime of her life filling inkpots with sherbet - What a crew! What a crew!

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Right in the pit of the stomach!

 I don't know if you have ever had the experience of starting off on a binge filled with a sort of glow of exhilaration, if that's the word I want, and then, without a moment's warning, having it disappear as if somebody had pressed a switch. That is what happened to me at this juncture and a most unpleasant feeling it was - rather like when you take one of those express elevators in New York at the top of the building and discover, on reaching the twenty-seventh floor, that you have carelessly left all your insides up on the thirty-second, and it's too late now to stop and fetch them back.

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Danger ahead!

 I have an idea I've told you about this Bobbie Wickham. She was the red-haired girl who let me down so disgracefully in the sinister affair of Tuppy Glossop and the hot-water bottle, that Christmas when I went to stay at Skeldings Hall, her mother's place in Hertfordshire. Her mother is Lady Wickham, who writes novels which, I believe, command a ready sale among those who like their literature pretty sloppy. A formidable old bird, rather like my Aunt Agatha in appearance. Bobbie does not resemble her, being constructed more on the lines of Clara Bow [see below]. She greeted me cordially as I entered - in fact, so cordially that I saw Jeeves pause at the door before biffing off to mix the cocktails and shoot me the sort of grave, warning look a wise old father might pass out to the effervescent son on seeing him going fairly strong with the local vamp. I nodded back, as much as to say "Chilled Steel!" and he oozed out, leaving me to play the sparkling host.

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

They didn't like the show

     A costermonger, roused, is a terrible thing. I had never seen the proletariat really stirred before, and I'm bound to say it rather awed me. I mean, it gave you some idea of what it must have been like during the French Revolution. From every corner of the hall there proceeded simultaneously the sort of noise which you hear, they tell me, at one of those East End boxing places when the referee disqualifies the popular favourite and makes the quick dash for life. And then they passed beyond mere words and began to introduce the vegetable motive.

    I don't know why, but somehow I had got it into my head that the first thing thrown at Tuppy would be a potato. One gets these fancies. It was, however, as a matter of fact, a banana, and I saw in an instant that the choice had been made by wise heads than mine. These blokes who have grown up from childhood in the knowledge of how to treat a dramatic entertainment that doesn't please them are aware by a sort of instinct just what to do for the bet, and the moment I saw that banana splash on Tuppy's shirtfront I realized how infinitely more effective and artistic it was than any potato could have been.

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A sure thing!

     "I came here, Bertie, because it was the only thing I could do. At the last moment before she sailed to America, Rosie decided that I had better stay behind and look after the Peke. She left me a couple of hundred quid to see me through till her return. This sum, judiciously expended over the period of her absence, would have been enough to keep Peke and self in moderate affluence. But you know how it is."

    "How what is?"

    "When someone comes slinking up to you in the club and tells you that some cripple of a horse can't help winning even if it develops lumbago and the botts ten yards from the starting post. I tell you, I regarded the thing as a cautious and conservative investment."

    "You mean you planked the entire capital on a horse?" 

    Bingo laughed bitterly. "If you could call the thing a horse. If it hadn't shown a flash of speed in the straight, it would have got mixed up with the next race. It came in last, putting me in a dashed delicate position."

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Taking a few days off from blogging

 Soon to return.

Because I said so!

     "Don't speak in that casual way, as if you supposed that it was perfectly natural that you would make a good impression upon him. Mr. Filmer is a serious-minded man of high character and purpose, and you are just the type vapid and frivolous wastrel against which he is most likely to be prejudiced.

    Hard words, of course, from one's own flesh and blood, but well in keeping with past form.

    "You will endeavour, therefore, while you are here not to display yourself in the role of a vapid and frivolous wastrel. In the first place, you will give up smoking during your visit."

    "Oh, I say!"

    "Mr. Filmer is president of the Anti-Tobacco League. Nor will you drink alcoholic stimulants."

    "Oh, dash it!"

    "And you will kindly exclude from your conversation all that is suggestive of the bar, the billiards-room, and the stage-door. Mr. Filmer will judge you largely by your conversation." I rose to a point of order.

    "Yes, but why have I got to make an impression on this - on Mr. Filmer?"

    "Because," said the old relative, giving me the eye, "I particularly wish it."

    Not, perhaps, a notably snappy come-back as come-backs go; but it was enough to show me that that was more or less that; and I beetled out with an aching heart.

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Jolly old Uncle George

     "Has it ever occurred to you, Bertie," she said, "that your Uncle George may be psychic?" She seemed to be changing the subject.

    "Psychic?"

    "Do you think it is possible that he could see things not visible to the normal eye?"

    I thought it was dashed possible, if not probable. I don't know if you've ever met my Uncle George. He's a festive old egg who wanders from club to club continually having a couple with other festive old eggs. When he heaves in sight, waiters brace themselves up and the wine-steward toys with his corkscrew. It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.

(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A nice, comfortable relationship

     The five-ten was late as usual, and everybody was dressing for dinner when I arrived at the Hall. It was only by getting into my evening things in record time ana taking the stairs to the dining-room in a couple of bounds that I managed to dead-heat with the soup. I slid into the vacant chair, and found that I was sitting next to old Wickhammersley's youngest daughter, Cynthia.

    "Oh, hallo, old thing," I said.

    Great pals we've always been. In fact, there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she's the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I've heard here speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we're just pals. I think she's a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything's nice and matey.

(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Fish-face

     I then perceived hat the stout stripling had trickled into the room after Jeeves. He was standing near the door looking at Cyril as if his worst fears had been realized. There was a bit of a silence. The child remained there, drinking Cyril in for about half a minute; then he gave his verdict.

    "Fish-face!"

    "Eh? What?" said Cyril. The child, who had evidently been taught at his mother's knee to speak the truth, made his meaning a trifle clearer.

    "You've a face like a fish!"

    He spoke as if Cyril was more to be pitied than censured, which I am bound to say I thought rather decent and broad-minded of him. I don't mind admitting that, whenever I looked at Cyril's face, I always had a feeling that he couldn't have got that way without its being mostly his own fault. I found myself warming to this child. Absolutely, don't you know. I liked his conversation.

(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Waukeesi

 This term is found in The Inimitable Jeeves, first published by P. G. Wodehouse in 1923. I found an explanation of it on the blog "The Annotated Wodehouse."

+++

The Waukeezi Shoe Company Limited of Northampton sold shoes and boots during the first half of the 20th century. Readers unaccustomed to mentally pronouncing ‘walk’ in British fashion may not immediately realize the brand name is a play on ‘walk easy.’ Or at least, I didn’t. This may be both the only time Wodehouse spelled the brand name Waukeezi with a Y, and the only time he felt it necessary to add the classifying noun ‘shoe.’ He more usually preferred to use the brand name as a metonym for foot (or feet): ‘Put the old Waukeesi down with a bang’ as Wodehouse wrote in the Bertie Wooster story ‘Jeeves and the Chump Cyril’ or, more commonly, ‘pick up the old waukeesies,’ (meaning ‘let's go; hurry up’). So far as I have been able to determine, Wodehouse always spelled the brand name with an S, never a Z (as used by the actual brand).

Confounded letters of introduction!

 You know, the longer I live, the more clearly I see that half the trouble in this bally world is caused by the light-hearted and thoughtless way in which chappies dash off letters of introduction and hand them to other chappies to deliver to chappies of the third part. It's one of those things that make you wish you were living in the Stone Age. What I mean to say is, if a fellow in those days wanted to give anyone a letter of introduction, he had to spend a month or so carving it on a large-sized boulder, and the chances were that the other chappie got so sick of lugging the thing round in the hot sun that he dropped it after the first mile. But nowadays it's so easy to write letters of introduction that everybody does it without a second thought, with the result that some perfectly harmless cove like myself gets in the soup.

(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Eftsoons

 "If you take my tip you jolly well will, and that eftsoons or right speedily." (from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

I don't know about you, but "eftsoons" is not a word that I use every day. It means "soon after" and is listed in the dictionary as being an archaic word. But, of course, archaic does not mean that it is wrong. So you can still use it, and people will think you are smart for doing so.

Under Aunt Agatha's thumb

 The hotel which had had the bad luck to draw Aunt Agatha's custom was the Splendide, and by the time I got there there wasn't a member of the staff who didn't seem to be feeling it deeply. I sympathized with them. I've had experience of Aunt Agatha's hotels before. Of course, the real rough work was all over when I arrived, but I could tell by the way everyone groveled before her that she had started by having her first room changed because it hadn't a southern exposure and her next because it had a creaking wardrobe and that she had said her say on the subject of the cooking, the waiting, the chamber-maiding and everything else, with perfect freedom and candour. She had got the whole gang nicely under control by now. The manager, a whiskered cove who looked like a bandit, simply tied himself into knots whenever she looked at him.

(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The good old days

     A resilient bird, Bingo. He may be down, but he is never out. While these little love affairs of his are actually on, nobody could be more earnest and blighted; but once the fuse has blown out and the girl has handed him his hat and begged him as a favour never to let her see him again, up he bobs as merry and bright as ever. If I've seen it happen once, I've seen it happen a dozen times.

    So I didn't worry about Bingo. Or about anything else, as a matter of fact. What with one thing and another, I can't remember ever having been chirpier than at about this period in my career. Everything seemed to be going right. On three separate occasions horses on which I'd invested a sizeable amount won by lengths instead of sitting down to rest in the middle of the race, as horses usually do when I've got money on them.

(from The Inimitable Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Murder is murder

     "I'd like you to come, Jean," Patrick insisted.

    "If you think I'm playing guinea pig - "

    "Please!"

    "It goes against the grain," I said. "Of all the people mixed up in this business, the doctor's the one I feel sorriest for. I don't suppose he's much, maybe he's been nothing but a shadow of a doctor all his life, but maybe that's Mrs. Lake's fault. If he did it, I say let him go and good luck!"

    "Jeanie," Patrick said, and his voice had a tender note, "if it relieves your mind any, I feel sorry for him myself."

    Instantly, because of the way he said it, all the pieces of the puzzle flowed together, each in its place. The clues led to Annie, Claire continued to be a mystery, Val might or might not be guilty of manslaughter, Ernest Fabian was the one my mind wanted to pin murder on, or Emma, but Dr. Fearheiley was the answer to all the questions.

    I got out and followed Patrick up the brick walk. I didn't like it, but murder is murder.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

I'm not THAT interested

     Earnest warmed up. "You know birds, Mr. Abbott? How amazing! But I wish you wouldn't call the screech-owl common. It certainly isn't rare, but so little is known about the habits of this interesting bird, that when I discovered one close by I have given night after night to observing this little fellow and making notes which will be a real contribution, I hope, to ornithology. I wish you'd told me you knew birds."

    "My knowledge is most superficial, compared to yours, Mr. Fabian. But please go on. I'm interested to know what you learn that is worth the discomfort you must suffer - "

    Earnest waved one of the hands. "The discomfort is nothing, if you're interested."

    He talked for twenty minutes about owls. I've got nothing against owls, but I'm almost willing to all them wise and let it go at that.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

Making childen into idols

     I nodded. "I seem to have heard somewhere that God's noblest creature is a devoted mother, but I can't see much difference between Emma and Mrs. Lake. With Mrs. Lake, it was Fabian and money. With Emma, it's her kids."

    "You're supposed to be like that about kids, Jean."

    "Maybe. But Emma's the kind that thinks hers are the only kids. There's no world to Emma outside that ugly little house and her kids. No great war. No social changes. No art and beauty - oh, skip it!"

    "Not being mothers," Peg said, as I started up, "maybe we aren't being entirely fair.

    I stopped again.

    "Maybe not. Anyhow, what I started out to say in the first place was that if Emma thought she had to do murder for her kid's sake, she'd do it. And think herself justified, even noble, because of it."

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

It takes more than money

 She backed from the room. Patrick Abbott remained standing beside the chair she had assigned him, because he was a stranger and it was her best. I gave the room a onceover. It had the articles in it deemed necessary for the modern living room. They were not of specially inferior quality, but the room looked poor and barren. It was its mistress's poverty of taste and imagination which made it so. I've lived too long among artists to think it takes money to make an attractive home.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

Circassian walnut

 In her novel, The Golden Box, author Frances Crane refers to furniture that was "American walnut much carved and inlaid with the Circassian walnut." Even though I worked for a year in the furniture industry and we sold pieces of furniture with walnut laminate and stain on them, I do not recall the term "Circassian." The internet tells me that it is "a highly prized, slow-growing walnut species from the Caucasus region, renowned for its dense, fine-grained, and visually striking wood."

Crime has a color

 "I'd hate to touch anything in here," I said. Patrrick was putting on a pair of soft cotton gloves. "If I were you I'd be one of those detectives that does everything by psychology," I said. Patrick said nothing. He was already starting a swift methodical search of everything in the room, beginning with the bed, lifting its covers and sheets, running gloved fingers over the pillows and the ancient mattress, eyeing the rusty springs, then put it together again so that it looked just as it did in the first place. I stood off, and each second hated the whole business more. "I'll do the psychology part," I said. "See that watermelon pink comb on the dresser? If vice has a color, it's watermelon pink. She done it."

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

Catercornered

 "Our table was a long one in the corner catercornered from the bar." (from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

I was surprised when I came across Crane's usage of this word, because it was totally unfamiliar to me. Here in South Logan County we would say "cattycornered."

On the Grammarist website, I found two more options: kittycornered and caddycornered. Which of these you use is entirely a matter of regional preference. However:

"The term was originally catty-corner, which comes from the French word quatre, meaning four. When English speakers got their paws on quatre, it became cater, used to showcase the four spots on a die or the four legs of a beast. Or, in this case, the corners of four city blocks meeting. Eventually, cater-cornered became a term for something positioned diagonally from something else, like the opposite corners on a square die. Then, cater-cornered got clipped to catty-corner, kitty-corner and caddy-corner."

Just leave those dishes alone!

 Ernest Fabian, infallibly punctilious, went around to the front door. And Patrick Abbgott, who you'd think would have been detecting on all cylinders just then, said, "While you hold the villain at bay, Jeanie, I'll start doing the dishes."

I threw him one of my most meaningful looks. In the first place I don't like men who voluntarily do dishes. I can only say in his favor that though he started them at once he did so untidily. Like Peg, I do want to be fair.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

I never tried to hang myself

     I said, "Why wouldn't she tie the rope itself directly around her neck?"

    "Don't ask me," Bill said.

    Patrick himself, mind you, answered it from where he sat, while he kept his eyes on the glass which he was moving slowly over the rope. "Suicides by hanging for some reason often try to make the ordeal easier by tying a soft scarf or handkerchief around the throat."

    "But why?"

    "Apparently they think it will make it hurt less."

    "Does it?"

    "I don't know," Patrick said impatiently. "I never tried it."

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

You men do your jobs!

 "I don't this is suicide at all. I am quite sure that Earnest Fabian found out that Ida was gossiping about Mrs. Lake'a death and so got scared and murdered her. Even if it were suicide it makes me furious," she declared. "I mean, if Fearheiley had found Mrs. Lake hanging by her neck I don't doubt that he would have called it throat trouble and certified it as due to natural causes, but since Ida's a harmless little colored girl, just to protect themselves they drag in that idiotic Norman Dawes and go through the motions of an inquest, with everything cut and dried in advance. I mean, nobody wants to bother seriously because it's only Ida Raymond. Now, don't you let them get away with it, Bill. You, either, Pat."

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

How to be popular

 He arrived in twenty minutes, looking very satisfactory in gray herringbone, a white shirt, and a blue tie. He fitted right in. Said just the right things in the right way, and not too many of them. Turned on the charm. People who say charm is a sign of a weak character don't know Patrick Abhott. I suppose if you want to enchant people the thing to do is to do nothing casually. Or do something as though it were nothing - such as sitting in late on a poker game and promptly magnetizing the chips. That hooked the man. The girls tumbled because he was lean, tall, looked western and hard to get.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

The trouble with funerals

     "Lucky you took along Toby, the celebrated feline flatfoot. Love, Pat," he wired back three days later, by which time Mrs. Claribel Fabian Lake had been stowed in the Fabian vault in the Elm Hill cemetery.

    For a while the body had made news. There had been a private funeral, for one thing, the first ever held in Elm Hill. And before that people talked because the body had been taken to St. Louis for embalming, and when it was brought back the coffin stood in the parlor under a blanket of orchids and gardenias, and, so far as anyone heard, was not opened. Ernest went to some trouble to explain to people that his cousin had a horror of being looked at after death. Which was all right, except that she had done plenty of looking herself, having been a great one to go to funerals, and people didn't like it. Funerals are rather communal in Elm Hill. To be told not to send flowers and that the funeral would be private made us feel snubbed.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

By women for women

 "She had on a powder-blue jersey shirt and brown jersey slacks."

This is a sentence taken from Frances Crane's novel, The Golden Box, published in 1942. 

It is interesting to me when writers reveal bald-facedly that they are willingly sacrificing half their market. This story is a murder mystery, and IF the sentence above had imbedded within it some sort of clue that would lead us down the path of discovering who done it, then I (speaking as a male) could see some purpose to it. But you will have to take my word for it that it does not. It is like the descriptions of wedding gowns that used to be published in the newspapers. Did any man EVER read those? Highly unlikely. Nor do any men who might read this novel care what Peg was wearing as she came into the room carrying a glass of orange juice. There is nothing wrong with it, it is just not something that would interest the typical male reader.

So, since this is a mystery, and we are murder mystery fans, what do we deduce from the sentence at the top of this page? It tells us that this was a story written by a woman for women. It is actually a fairly good yarn and the detective who solves the mystery is a man. But the person telling the story is a woman, and she tells us things that could only interest a woman. So, either the author was pointing this story strictly at a female market, or she was woefully ignorant of the differences between the sexes, which I doubt. OR she was making the teller of the tail realistic by having her focus on things that would interest a woman, which I suspect is the truth.

The parallel on the male side of the equation would be a Louis L'Amour novel in which the hero shoots three bad guys on the first page. He is not writing that book for women. Oh, sure, a good many women may read it, but he reveals his market by how he writes the book.

It's the nose that does it

Peg and I were the same age. Twenty-six. I hoped I was as well preserved as she was. We were said to look alike, and we both do have the yellow Holly eyes with black brows and lashes, but Peg was extra lucky in getting tawny hair and a perky nose to go with them. Nothing lightens a girl's path like a nose that invites a tweak, especially when it is backed by strong character like my cousin Peg's. My hair is black, my nose, alas, is quite conventional, and my character is definitely wavery.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

His kind of woman

     He said, "Still she's hardly my ideal woman."

    "But really!" I said. With sarcasm.

    "I never have cared much for women who screech and yelp if they don't get everything they want when they want it. Other peoples' husbands, for instance. But I do like women who are easy to look at."

    "So I've noticed!" I snapped.

    "Still, I'm not partial to blondes. I like them slim, with white skin, black hair, amber eyes, long lashes, competent hands, minds of their own even though cockeyed, sympathetic even when it's not quite bright to be so, with a shop in which you love to sit around and prattle, lots of friends - "

    "You seem to have someone in mind."

    "I have. Definitely," Patrick Abbott said.

    I could feel my color coming up like a sunrise. I looked at him again. He was watching me. With an eyebrow up I must admit that he was putting me in a state of great mental confusion. But it was very agreeable.

(from The Turquoise Shop, by Frances Crane)

Should have stuck to art

     I sighed "I can't believe it. Michael was so nice."

    "Nice? Clever, you mean. Gifted. Ruthless. Sly. He took such pains to make people like him, simply because he understood you all so well. Better than you did yourselves sometimes. He flattered Mona Brandon, was candid with you, cool and businesslike with me. He should have done something constructive with such a talent. He certainly was a better artist than criminal, though. He walked right into our traps."

    "So you did work on the case?"

    "Oh, no. Just helped the sheriff out a bit."

    "You're modest."

    "Me? You ought to ee me strutting around on a case of my own!"

(from The Turquoise Shop, by Frances Crane)

A bad place to be a private eye

    "Pat," I said, and my voice sounded small, "do you think he did it?"

    

    "What?"

    

    "Murdered Arkwright and took that money?"

    

    Patrick slanted a glance at me. "I had rather gathered that you thought Mona had Luis Martinez do it."

    "That's really more like it, Pat. Gilbert honestly couldn't do such things."

    "I don't wonder you're all mixed up. I feel sorry for any investigator, no matter what the crime, in a place like this. What with people wanting to cover up for their friends or worrying about what will happen to their business if they antagonize Mona Brandon and with everybody knowing what everybody else will do before they do it, well - "

(from The Turquoise Shop, by Frances Crane)

Try a little kindness

 "How did you get the knife, Gilbert?" I asked.

"I went out there. Found it at the scene of the crime."

"Keeping it makes you an accessory after the fact."

"You're telling me?" he said, irritably.

"Of course I know you'll do what is wise, Gilbert," I purred. Gilbert flowered under this treatment. I wondered why I had never thought of it before.

(from The Turquoise Shop, by Frances Crane)

A community by and for crazy folks

     I stood with my back to the fire, hearing it crackle, feeling the gay warmth and smelling the piney smell. Through the wide window I noticed how the stormy sky made a backdrop for the haphazard-looking row of buildings across the plaza. Each side had its assortment of stores, shops and offices. Some were adobe, some brick, some wood, some had portals, some none, some lined up with each other, some didn't. All Santa Maria was like that. The streets ran any old way and the houses were all shapes and sizes and made no effort to align with their neighbors or the streets.

    Julia Price said that Santa Maria looked like a community style asylum built by the inmates. In which case, Daisy Payne said, Gilbert Mason would be inmate number one, though not because he did any building, and Gilbert retorted that the honor was ipso facto Daisy's. Their feud never had a lull.

(from The Turquoise Shop, by Frances Crane)

Not one cough?!

 Up to that point, life had been relatively easy for Frances. Her husband, Ned Crane, was a well-paid advertising executive with the J. Walter Thompson agency, whose dubious claim to immortality was the Old Gold cigarette slogan, "Not a cough in a carload."

[From the preface to The Turquoise Shop, by Frances Crane. Crane was a mystery writer and the creator of the Pat and Jean Abbott team and their 26 novels, and this book was the first in that series. The pair went on to be the subject of a radio series. And can you imagine someone being bald-faced enough to claim that smoking a carload of cigarettes would not cause a single cough?]

Look deep into my eyes!

     "Listen," said Cyril, and his voice shook like a jelly in a high wind. "Does it count if you ask a girl to marry you when you're hypnotized?"

    "You are speaking of Miss Flack?"

    "Yes, I proposed to her on the practice green, carried away by the super-excellence of her chip shots, and I can't stand the sight of her. And, what's more, in about three weeks I'm supposed to be marrying someone else. You remember Patricia Binstead, the girl who showed you into my office?"

    "Very vividly."

    "She holds the copyright. What am I to do? You couldn't go and hypnotize Agnes Flack and instil her, as you call it, with the idea that I'm the world's leading louse, could you?"

    "My dear fellow, nothing easier."

    "Then do it without an instant's delay," said Cyril. "Tell her I'm scratch and pretended to have a twenty-four handicap in order to win the medal. Tell her I'm sober only at the rarest intervals. Tell her I'm a Communist spy and my name's really Groolinsky. Tell her I've two wives already. But you'll know what to say."

(from "Sleepy Time," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

What sort of girl is she?

     "The whole thing," he said, "is one of those unfortunate misunderstandings. When they made me scratch, my first move was to thank Miss Flack warmly for all she had done for me."

    "Naturally."

    "I let myself go rather."

    "You would, of course."

    "Then, feeling that after all the trouble she had taken to raise me to the heights she was entitled to be let in on the inside story, I told her my reason for being so anxious to get down to scratch was that I loved a scratch girl and wanted to be worthy of her. Upon which, chuckling like a train going through a tunnel, she gave me a slap on the back which nearly drove my spine through the front of my pullover and said she had guessed it from the very start, from the moment when she first saw me dogging her footsteps with that look of dumb devotion in my eyes. You could have knocked me down with a putter."

    "She then said she would marry you?"

    "Yes, and what could I do? A girl," said Harold Pickering fretfully, "who can't distinguish between the way a man looks when he's admiring a chip shot thirty feet from the green and the way he looks when he's in love ought not to be allowed at large."

    There seemed nothing to say. The idea of suggesting that he should break off the engagement presented itself to me, but I dismissed it. Women are divided broadly into two classes - those who, when jilted, merely drop a silent tear and those who take a niblick from their bag and chase the faithless swain across the country with it.

(from "Scratch Man," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not a literary giant

 "I kissed William, shook him by the hand, tied a wet towel around his head, gave him pencil and paper and locked him up in the morning-room with lots of hot coffee. When I asked him just now how he was making out, he said that he had had no inspiration so far but would keep on swinging. His voice sounded very hollow. I can picture the poor darling's agony. The only thing he has ever written before in his life was a stiff letter to the Greens Committee beefing about the new bunker on the fifth, and that took him four days and left him as limp as a rag."

(from "Rodney Has a Relapse," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The world's rudest kid

 "Why, of course!" she cried, clasping her hands in a sort of ecstasy. "I ought to have thought of it myself. People may say what they like about my sweet Braid, but they can't deny that he is the rudest child this side of the Atlantic Ocean. I'll send him to you the moment he clocks in."

    Braid Bates at that time was a young plug-ugly of some nine summers, in appearance a miniature edition of William and in soul and temperament a combination of Dead End Kid and army mule; a freckled, hard-boiled character with a sardonic eye and a mouth which, when not occupied in eating, had a cynical twist to it. He spoke little as a general thing, but when he did speak seldom failed to find a chink in the armour. The impact of such a personality on little Timothy must, I felt, be tremendous, and I was confident that we could not have placed the child in better hands.

(from "Rodney Has a Relapse," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not the right sort of woman

        A girl who has loved, even if mistakenly, can never be indifferent to the fortunes of the man whom she once regarded as the lode star of her life. She kept wondering how he was making out, and hoped that his vacation was not spoiled by a broken heart.

    The first time she saw him, accordingly, she should have been relieved and pleased. He was escorting Cora McGuffy Spottsworth along the boardwalk, and it was abundantly obvious even from a casual glance that if his heart had ever been broken, there had been some adroit work done in the repair shop. Clark Gable could have improved his technique by watching the way he bent over Cora McGuffey Spottsworth and stroked her slender arm. He also, while bending and stroking, whispered into her shell-like ear, and you could see that what he was saying was good stuff. His whole attitude was that of a man who, recognizing that he was on a good thing, was determined to push it along.

    But Agnes Flack was not relieved and pleased; she was disturbed and concerned. She was perhaps a hard judge, but Cora McGuffy Spottsworth looked to her like the sort of woman who goes about stealing the plans of forts - or, at the best, leaning back negligently on a settee and saying, "Prince, my fan." The impression Agnes formed was of something that might be all right stepping out of a pie at a bachelor party, but not the type you could take home to meet mother.

(from "Feet of Clay," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Close, but lacking a few qualifications

     "Naturally, she compares you to your disadvantage with such a man as 'Mgoopi 'Mgwumpi."

    Ernest Plinlimmon's eyes widened and his mouth fell open, causing him to look exactly like a fish I once caught off Brighton pier.

    "Such a man as - what was that name again?"

    "'Mgoopi 'Mgwumpi. He was the chief, if I remember rightly, of the Lesser 'Mgowpi. I gather that his personality made a deep impression upon Miss Fitch, and that, but for the fact that he was as black as the ace of spades and aready had twenty-seven wives and a hundred pares, something might have come of it. At any rate, she as good as told me the other day that what she was looking for someone who, while possessing the engaging spiritual qualities of this chief, was rather blonder and a bachelor."

(from "There's Always Golf," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Golf by brute force

     Poskitt, the d'Artagnan of the links, was a man who brought to the tee the tactics which in his youth had won him such fame as a hammer thrower. His plan was to clench his teeth, shut his eyes, whirl the club around his head and bring it down with sickening violence in the general direction of the sphere. Usually, the only result would be a ball topped along the ground or - as had been known to happen when he used his niblick - cut in half. But there would come times when by some mysterious dispensation of Providence he managed to connect, in which event the gallery would be stunned by the spectacle of a three-hundred-yarder down the middle. The whole thing, as he himself recognized, was a clean, sporting venture. He just let go and hoped for the best.

(from "The Letter of the Law," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not a woman to mess around with

 Mark you, if ever men had an excuse for being ill at ease in the presence of the opposite sex, these two had. They were both eighteen-handicap men, and Agnes was exuberantly and dynamically scratch. Her physique was an asset to her, especially in the long game. She stood about five feet ten in her stockings, and had shoulders and forearms which would have excited the envious admiration of one of those muscular women on the music-halls, who good-naturedly allow six brothers, three sisters, and a cousin by marriage to pile themselves on her collarbone while the orchestra plays a long-drawn chord and the audience hurries out to the bar. Her eye resembled the eye of one of the more imperious queens of history; and when she laughed, strong men clutched at their temples to keep the tops of their heads from breaking loose.

(from "Those In Peril on the Tee," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Happy ending

     William brooded for a while. He was not a quick thinker.

    "Well, look here," he said at length, "this is the point. This is the nub of the thing. This is where I want you to follow me very closely. Have you asked Anastatia to marry you?"

    "Marry me?" Rodney gazed at him, shocked. "Have I asked her to marry me? I, who am not worthy to polish the blade of her niblick! I, who have not even a thirty handicap, ask a girl to marry me who was in the semi-final of last year's Ladis' Open! No, no, Bates, I may be a vers-libre poet, but I have some sense of what is fitting. I love her, yes. I love her with a fervour which causes me to frequently and for hours at a time lie tossing sleeplessly upon my pillow. But I would not dare to ask her to marry me."

    Anastatia burst into a peal of girlish laughter. "You poor chump!" she cried. "Is that what has been the matter all this time? I couldn't make out what the trouble was. Why, I'm crazy about you. I'll marry you any time you give the word."

    Rodney reeled. "What!"

    "Of course I will."

    "Anastatia!"

    "Rodney!" He folded her in his arms.

(from "The Purification of Rodney Spelvin," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Nothing to be afraid of

     The studio was one of those dim, over-ornamented rooms which appeal to men like Rodney Spelvin. Heavy curtains hung in front o the windows. One corner was cut off by a high-backed Chesterfield. At the far end was an alcove, curtained like the windows. Once Jane had admired this studio, but now it made her shiver. It seemed to her one of those nests in which, as the sub-title of Tried in the Furnace had said, only eggs of evil were hatched. She paced the thick carpet restlessly, and suddenly there came to her the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

    Jane stopped, every muscle tense. The moment had arrived. She faced the door, tight-lipped. It comforted her a little in this crisis to reflect that Rodney was not one of those massive Ethel M. Dell libertines who might make things unpleasant for an intruder. He was only a welter-weight egg of evil; and, if he tried to start anything, a girl of her physique would have little or no difficulty in knocking the stuffing out of him.

(from "The Purification of Rodney Spelvin," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[Ethel M. Dell was a writer of popular British romance novels.]

Better to be prepared

 "Do not let us speak of it," he said, registering pain. It was quite easy for him to do this. All there was to it was tightening the lips and drawing up the left eyebrow. He had practiced it in front of his mirror, for a fellow never knew when it might not come in useful.

(from "Jane Gets Off the Fairway," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

After all these years!

     "Rodney!" gasped Jane.

    It was a difficult moment for Rodney Spelvin. Five years had passed since he had last seen Jane, and in those five years so many delightful creatures had made a fuss of him that the memory of the girl to whom he had once been engaged for a few weeks had become a little blurred. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he had forgotten Jane altogether. The fact that she had addressed him by his first name seemed to argue that they must have met at some time somewhere; but, though he strained his brain, absolutely nothing stirred.

    The situation was one that might have embarrassed another man, but Rodney Spelvin was a quick thinker. He saw at a glance that Jane was an extremely pretty girl, and it was his guiding rule in life never to let anything like that get past him. So he clasped her hand warmly, allowed an expression of amazed delight to sweep over his face, and gazed tensely into her eyes.

    "You!" he murmured, playing it safe. "You, little one!"

    Jane stood five feet seven in her stockings and had a forearm like the village blacksmith's, but she liked being called "little one."

    "How strange that we should meet like this!" she said, blushing brightly.

    "After all these years," said Rodney Spelvin, taking a chance. It would be a nuisance if it turned out that they had met at a studio-party the day before yesterday, but something seemed to tell him that she dated back a goodish way. Besides, even if they had met the day before yesterday, he could get out of it by saying that the hours had seemed like years. For you cannot stymie these modern poets.

(from "Jane Gets Off the Fairway," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Come on, Bill, get with it!

 And it did not appear likely that anything would weaken Jane's regard. They had much in common, for she was a calm, slow-moving person, too. They had a mutual devotion to golf, and played together every day; and the fact that their handicaps were practically level formed a strong bond. Most divorces, as you know, spring from the fact that the husband is too markedly superior to his wife at golf; this leading him, when she starts criticizing his relations, to say bitter and unforgivable things about her mashie-shots. Nothing of this kind could happen with William and Jane. They would build their life on a solid foundation of sympathy and understanding. The years would find them consoling and encouraging each other, happy married lovers. If, that is to say, William ever got round to proposing.

(from "Rodney Fails To Qualify," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Love is but a tepid emotion

 His fingers picked feverishly at the arm of his chair. He had paled to the very lips. If the office was barred to him, on what pretext could he sneak away from home? And sneak he must for tomorrow and the day after the various qualifying sixteens were to play the match-rounds for the cups; and it was monstrous and impossible that he should not be there. He must be there. He had done ninety-six, and the next best medal score in his sixteen was a hundred and one. For the first time in his life he had before him the prospect of winning a cup; and, highly though the poets have spoken of love, that emotion is not to be compared with the frenzy which grips a twenty-four-handicap man who sees himself within reach of a cup.

(from "Keeping In with Vosper," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The origins of Absolutism

     "To lose one's temper at golf is foolish. It gets you nothing, not even relief. Imitate the spirit of Marcus Aurelius. 'Whatever may befall thee,' says that great man in his 'Meditations,' 'it is preordained for thee from everlasting. Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.' I like to think that this noble thought came to him after he had sliced a couple of new balls into the woods, and that he jotted it down on the back of his scorecard. For there can be no doubt that the man was a golfer, and a bad golfer at that."

(from "Ordeal by Golf," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Simple - just kill George

     "By the way," I said, looking round, "where is your fiance?"

    "I have no fiance," she said, in a dull, hard voice.

    "You have broken off the engagement?"

    "Not exactly. And yet - well, I suppose it amounts to that."

    "I don't quite understand."

    "Well, the fact is," said Celia, in a burst of girlish frankness, "I rather think I've killed George."

    "Killed him, eh?"

    It was a solution that had not occurred to me, but now that it was presented for my inspection I could see its merits. In these days of national effort, when we are all working together to try to make our beloved land fit for heroes to live in, it was astonishing that nobody before had thought of a simple, obvious thing like killing George Mackintosh. George Mackintosh was undoubtedly better dead, but it had taken a woman's intuition to see it.

    "I killed him with my niblick," said Celia.

    I nodded. If the thing was to be done at all, it was unquestionably a niblick shot.

(from "The Salvation of George Mackintosh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

She doesn't like golf?!

     "Peter, old man, that girl aid golf bored her pallid. She said she thought it was the silliest game ever invented." He paused to mark the effect of his words. Peter merely smiled a faint, wan smile. "You don't seem revolted," said James.

    "I am revolted, but not surprised. You see, she said the same thing to me only a few minutes before."

    "She did!"

    "It amounted to the same thing. I had just been telling her how I did the lake-hole today in two, and she said that in her opinion golf was a game for children with water on the brain who weren't athletic enough to play Animal Grab."

    The two men shivered in sympathy.

    "There must be insanity in the family," said James at last.

    "That," said Peter, "is the charitable explanation.

(from "A Woman Is Only a Woman," by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)