But only if you like pigs

     Lord Emsworth, as his custom was, had pottered off there directly after breakfast, and now, at half past twelve, he was still standing, in company with his pig-man Pirbright, draped bonelessly over the rail of the sty, his mild eyes beaming with the light of a holy devotion.

    From time to time he sniffed sensuously. Elsewhere throughout this fair domain the air was fragrant wit hthe myriad scents of high summer, but not where Lord Emsworth was doing his sniffing. Within a libereal radius of the Empress's headquarters other scents could not compete. This splendid animal diffused an aroma which was both distinctive and interesting. Attractive, too, if you liked that sort of thing, as Lord Emsworth did.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

How Lord Peter does it

     Fentiman laughed, and ground out the offending cigarette stub on the nearest ash-tray. "I wonder anybody cares to know you," he said. The strain and bitterness had left his voice and he sounded merely amused.

    "They wouldn't," said Wimsey, "only they think I'm too well-off to have any brains. It's like hearing that the Earl of Somewhere is taking a leading part in a play. Everybody takes it for granted he must act rottenly. I'll tell you my secret. All my criminological investigations are done for me by a 'ghost' at three pounds a week, while I get the headlines and frivol with well-known journalists at the Savoy."

    "I find you refreshing, Wimsey," said Fentiman, languidly. "You're not in the least witty but you have a kind of obvious facetiousness which reminds me of the less exacting class of music hall."

(from The Unpleseantness in the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)

Large nobility?

 Don Wilson, longtime announcer for the Jack Benny program, was married for seven years to Polish countess Marusia Radunska. Given that Wilson was a very robust gentleman whose girth was a running joke on the program, one wonders concerning the proportions of his noble lady.

Land of the not quite living

     "What in the world, Wimsey, are you doing in this Morgue?" demanded Captain Fentiman, flinging aside the "Evening Banner" with the air of a man released from an irksome duty.

    "Oh, I wouldn't call it that," retorted Wimsey, amiably. "Funeral Parlor at the very least. Look at the marble. Look at the furnishings. Look at the palms and the chaste brone nude in the corner."

    "Yes, and look at the corpses. Place always reminds me of that old thing in 'Punch,' you know - 'Walter, take away Lord Whatisname, he's been dead two days.' Look at Old Ormsby there, snoring like a hippopotamus. Look at my revered grandpa - dodders in here at ten every morning, collects the 'Morning Post' and the armchair by the fire, and become part of the furniture till the evening."

(from The Unpleasantness in the Bellona Club, by Dorothy Sayers)

Gally is writing a book?!

      When, some months before, the news had got about that the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, brother of the Earl of Emsworth and as sprightly an old gentleman as was ever thrown out of a Victorian music-hall, was engaged in writing the recollections of his colourful career as a man about town in the nineties, the shock to the many now highly respectable members of the governing classes who in their hot youth had shared it was severe. All over the country decorous Dukes and steady Viscounts, who had once sown wild oats in the society of the young Galahad, sat quivering in their slippers at the thought of what long-cupboarded skeletons those Reminiscences might disclose.

    They knew their Gally, and their imagination allowed them to picture with a crystal clearness the sort of book he would be likely to produce. It would, they felt in their ageing bones, be essentially one of those of which the critics say, "A veritable storehouse of diverting anecdote."

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Too many steps

     "Who is he?"

    "An uncle of mine."

    "But he seemed respectable."

    "That is to say, a step-uncle. Or would you call him step-step? He married my late step-mother's step-sister. I'm not half sure," said Ukridge, pondering, "that step-step wouldn't be the correct description."

    These were deep waters, into which I was not prepared to plunge.

(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Big man coaches

     Who were the best college coaches of big men? That is hard to answer, for there have been many good ones. However, it would be hard to argue against John Thompson and John Wooden. Sure, both had big men with exceptional natural talent, but the point is that they knew what to do with that talent, and made good players better.

    Thompson coached Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning, to name probably the most famous of his stable. Wooden had Lew Alcindor (the greatest of them all), Bill Walton, and Swen Nater, to name just three. All of them went on to be NBA stars.

    What is interesting is that Thompson was himself an accomplished post player, but Wooden was small - but still was able to teach players to play in the post.

Lost in their thoughts

     His footsteps died away, and there was silence in the quiet garden. Both Anselm and Myrtle were busy with their thoughts. Once more through Anselm's mind there was racing that pithy address which the coach of his college boat had delivered when trying to do justice to the spectacle of Number Five's obtrusive stomach; while Myrtle, on her ide, was endeavouring not to give utterance to a rough tanslation of something she had once heard a French taxi driver say to a gendarme during her finishing school days in Paris.

(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Antigua's claims to fame

 Orlando Radhames Antigua Fernández is a coach and basketball player born in the Dominican Republic. He is notable for a couple of things. He was raised in the Bronx and on Halloween night he was the victim of a drive-by shooting and had a bullet lodged in his head near his left eye. Doctors were unable to remove the slug. He started playing ball again in two months.

Antigua's basketball play was good enough to earn him a scholarship to Pitt, and after he graduated from there in 1995, he became the first non-black player on the Harlem Globetrotters' roster since Bob Karstens in 1943. He was the head coach at South Florida for three seasons, and is now an assistant at Illinois.

The temptation might be too much for Joe

     "You must take care of it. Don't leave it lying about. We don't want somebody pinching it."

    A look of pain passed over Anselm's spiritual face. "You are not suggesting that the vicar would stoop to such an act?"

    "I was thinking more," said Myrtle, "of Joe Beamish."

    She was alluding to a member of her loved one's little flock who had at one time been a fairly prosperous burglar. Seeing the light after about sixteen prison sentences, he had given up his lifework and now raised vegetables and sang in the choir

(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Aren't all babies ugly?

     All he wanted was to place child and self on a sound financial footing, and as he reached Oofy's flat and pressed the bell, he was convinced that the thing was in the bag.

    In a less sanguine frame of mind, he might have been discouraged by the fact that the infant was looking more than ever like some mass-assassin who has been blackballed by the Devil's Island Social and Outing Club as unfit to associate with the members; but his experience with Charles Pikelet and the policeman had shown him that this was how all babies of that age looked, and he had no reason to suppose tha the one in "Tiny Fingers" had been any different The only thing Mrs. Bingo had stressed about the latter had been its pink toes, and no doubt Algernon, Aubrey, if called upon to do so, could swing as pink a toe as the next child.

(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Don't give her the chance

     Between Bingo and Mrs. Bingo there existed an almost perfect love. From the very inception of their union, they had been like ham and eggs. But he doubted whether the most Grade A affection could stand up against the revelation of what he had done this day. Look at his story from whatever angle you pleased, it remained one that reflected little credit on a young father and at the best must inevitably lead to, "Oh, how could you?" And the whole wheeze in married life, he had come to learn, was to give the opposite number as few opportunities of saying, "Oh, how could you?" as possible.

(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Ugly baby

     Introduced to the child in the nursing home, he recoiled with a startled "Oi!" and as the days went by the feeling that he had run up against something red-hot had in no way diminished. The only thing that prevented a father's love from faltering was the fact that there was in his possession a photograph of himself at the same early age, in which he, too, looked like a homocidal fried egg. This proof that it was possible for a child, in spite of a rocky start, to turn eventually into a suave and polished boulevardier with finely chiselled features heartened him a good deal, causing him to hope for the best.

(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Rain, rain

 Everything here is soggy. My yard will be knee-deep before I get it mowed. My roof is leaking. I can only imagine what the folks in Noah's day felt like.

That pleading look

     He felt something pawing at his sleeve. He glanced round, and there was Purkiss with a pleading look in his eyes, like a spaniel trying to ingratiate itelf with someone whom it knows to be allergic to dogs.

(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)