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)

Concerning knitting

 No masculine eye can reckon up purls and plains and estimate the size of chest which the garment is destined to cover. Moreover, with amateur knitters there much always be allowed a margin for involuntary error. There were many cases during the war where our girls sent sweaters to their sweethearts which would have induced strangulation in their young brothers. The amateur sweater of those days was, in fact, practically tantamount to German propaganda.

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

Wagering on love

 So little was known of the form of the two men, neither having figured as principal in a love-affair before, that even money was the best you could get, and the market was sluggish. I think my own flutter of twelve golf balls, taken up by Percival Brown, was the most substantial of any of the wagers. I selected James as the winner. Why, I can hardly say, unless that he had an aunt who contributed occasional stories to the "Women's Sphere." These thing sometimes weigh with a girl. On the other hand, George Lucas, who had half-a-dozen of ginger-ale on Peter, based his calculations on the fact that James wore knickerbockers on the links, and that no girl could possibly love a man with calves like that. In short, you see, we really had nothing to go on.

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

Nothing he can be proud of

    "Where you headed for, son?"

    "Riley McClean shrugged. "This is as good a place as any. I'm hunting a job."

    "What do you do?"

    "Most anything. It don't make no difference."

    Now when a man says that he can do most anything, it is a safe bet he can do nothing, or at least that he can do nothing well. If a man has a trade, he is proud of it and says so, and usually he will do a passing job of anything else he tackled.

(from "The One for the Mohave Kid," by Louis L'Amour)

Enough to make a preacher cuss

 Invariably, in the course of a man's struggle with a collar button it would slip from his fingers and roll into the most inaccessible place in the room. It was never possible to simply stoop down and pick up a collar button. One always had to get down on one's knees and reach under whatever piece of furniture was nearby and feel around for the missing object. It has been reliably reported that even ministers of the gospel used unseemly language on such occasions.

(from "McQueen of the Tumbling K," by Louis L'Amour)

She had already proposed

     He placed his hat carefully on the hook and sat down. He was suddenly tired. He ran his fingers through his crisp, dark hair. "Me?" he blinked his eyes and reached for the coffeepot. "I am going to shave and take a bath. Then I'm going to sleep for twenty hours about, and then I'm going to throw the leather on my horse and hit the trail."

    "I told you over there," Carol said quietly, "that I didn't want you to go."

    "Uh-uh. If I don't go now," he looked at her somberly, "I'd never want to go again."

    "Then don't go," she said.

    He didn't.

(from "The Man from Battle Flat," by Louis L'Amour)

Carpetbag courts

 In his short story, "Keep Travelin', Rider," Louis L'Amour refers to carpetbag courts, which were, of course, the legal system set up in the south after the War Between the States. We can assume that true justice for southerners was a vain hope in those days. One can only imagine what it was like living in the old south in those days.