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)