"Such brats - oh, dear me, such brats! Shall I confess it, Mr. Harkright? - I sadly want a reform of the construction of children. Nature's only idea eems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise."
(from The Woman In White, by William Wilkie Collins)
Upon the whole, he had a frail, languidly-fretful, over-refined look - something singularly and upleasantly delicate in its association with a man, and, at the same time, something which could by no possibility have looked natural and appropriate if it had been transferred to the personal appearance of a woman. My morning's experience of Miss Halcombe had predisposed me to be pleased with everybody in the house, but my sympathies shut themselves up resolutely at the first sight of Mr. Fairlie.
(from The Woman in White, by William Wilkie Collins)
Mr. Fairlie is too great an invalid to be a compaion for anybody. I don't know what is the matter with him, and the doctors don't know what is the matter with him, and he doesn't know himself what is the matter with him. We all say it's on the nerves, and we none of us know what we mean when we say it.
(from The Woman in White, by William Wilkie Collins)
Her expression - bright, frank, and intelligent - appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive is beauty incomplete. To see such a face as this set on shoulders that a sculptor would have longed to model - to be charmed by the modest graces of action through which the symmetrical limbs betrayed their beauty when they moved, and then to be almost repelled by the masculine form and masculine look of the features in which the perfectly-shaped figure ended - was to feel a sensation oddly kin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all in sleep, when we recognise yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and contradictions of a dream
(from The Woman in White, by William Wilkie Collins)
The fine house, my good dears, has got inside it a fine family. A Mamma, fair and fat; and a Papa, the fairest and the fattest of all, who is a mighty merchant, up to his eyes in gold - a fine man once, but seeing that he has got a naked head and two chins, fine no longer at the present time.
(from The Woman In White, by William Wilkie Collins)
I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character - for this plain reason, that the effect produced by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible, in novel-writing, to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognisable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women - for the perfectly-obvious reason that they are men and women themselves.
(William Wilkie Collins, from the Preface to the 1861 Edition of The Woman in White)
There was another silence, this time distinctly awkward. It had always been a bone of contention between them that Ellery was stubbornly uncommunicative until the very denouement of a case. Neither pleas nor wild horses could drag a single explanatory word out of him until he was mentally satisfied that he had built up a flawless and impenetrable argument. So there was really no point in asking questions.
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
He delved among the miscellaneous objects from the bag and fished out a torn, worn, coverless book. It looked as if it had been used as ammunition in a major conflict.
"Not a Bible. Ordinary cheap little breviary," he muttered. "Hmm. And those pamphlets - ah, religious tracts! We seem to have stuck a very godly old gentleman, dad."
"Godly old gentlemen rarely get themselves bumped off," said the Inspector dryly.
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
They waited for what seemed to Ellery, at least, an eternity.
He kept shifting his attention from the fidgety boy in blue to one of the four huge gilded clocks above the information booth. The minutes sucked by lazily. He had never realized before how long a minute could be; how long and empty and nerve-racking.
The Inspector watched without change of expression. He was accustomed to these interludes and from years of experience had developed a patience with anticipated events which was, to Ellery, little short of marvelous.
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
The Inspector slammed the receiver and yelled: "Ready?"
"For the love of Peter," panted Ellery from the bedroom, "what d'ye think I am - a fireman? What is this, anyway?" He appeared in the living-room doorway in unlaced shoes, trousers with hanging suspenders, unbottoned shirt, necktie in hand. Djuna gaped from the kitchen.
"Grab your hat and coat and finish dressing in the cab!" shouted the Inspector, yanking Ellery toward the foyer. "Come on!" And he dived through the door.
Ellery made a strangled sound and scrambled after, the tongues of his oxfords flapping dismally.
"But the oofs?" moaned Djuna.
There was no answer except the thunder of feet running down the stairs.
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
Ellery drawled: "Care to talk?"
The young man force a grin. "Curiously enough, I'm not in a conversational mood at the moment."
"Curiously enogh, I am. Peaceful atmosphere, two intelligent young men alone, smoking - perfect background for small talk, Kirk. I've always said - a most original and observation, of course - that what the American needs is not so much a good five-cent cigar as the civilizing inluence of inconsequential conversation. Don't you want to be civilized, you heathen?"
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
"Well," he said with a short despairing laugh, "here I am. Caught red-handed, Queen - and by you, of all people."
"Fate," murmured Ellery. "And a kind fate for you, my careening young bucko. A more vigorous operative might have - what's the phrase? ah, yes - plugged you first and asked questions afterward. Fortunately, having a sensitive stomach, I don't carry firearms. . . . Fearfully bad habit, Kirk, prowling about ladies' bedrooms at this time of night. Get you into trouble."
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
Then Ellery said gently: "Oh, come, dad. Don't let that drunken boor get the best of you. He does raise the hackles, I confess. I've felt, myself, a prickling at the nape of my neck that's as old as man's enemies . . . . Get that look off your face, dad, please."
"He's the first man," said the Inspector deliberately, "in twenty years who has made me feel like committing murder. The other one was the bird who raped his own daughter; and at least he was crazy."
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
"And now, Inspector, I must insist that you call your dogs off. I won't have this perpetual persecution. If you persist, I shall leave at once."
"That's what you think," said the Inspector sourly. "But you're not leaving until I give you permission to. If you make the slighest move to get out of the country, I'll arrest you on suspicion. It's a swell word, and it's very elastic. Matter of fact, I could slam you behind bars this minute for being an undesirable character. So you stay put in this apartment of yours, Sewell, and be a nice girl. Don't try any tricks on me."
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
Osborne sat very still. His weary eyes shifted, and his knuckles became a dirty white. "Why - I can't - remember any such error," he muttered.
"Liar," said Ellery cheerfully. "We know all about it, Ozzie. If I may call you Ozzie . . ."
"You - know?" said Osborne with difficulty, raising his eyes.
"Oh, certainly. Don Kirk himself told us."
Osborne took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "I'm sorry, Mr. Queen. I thought - "
"Come on," snapped the Inspector impatiently. "You, there!" he bellowed at the policeman, who started and went pale. "You see that this man Osborne here doesn't touch that house phone for five minutes. Be good, Osborne. . . . Well, come on, boys. If there's any fun we might's well be in on it, too!"
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
"There are a lot of 'ifs' in this business, my son. I'm not claiming anything. May've been born and brought up in the city here and never left the Bronx once, for all I know. Or this may have been his first visit to New York. But I'm betting he wasn't a New Yorker."
"Probably not," drawled Ellery. "I just made the point to get it on the record. I think you're right, myself."
"Oh, you do?" snapped the Inspector. "When you use that tone of voice I get suspicious. Come on - what d'ye know?"
"Nothing that you don't know," laughed Ellery. "I've told you every little thing that's happened so far when you weren't around. Can't I agree with you once in a while without being jumped like horse thief?"
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
Perhaps the most precise development in the science of policing is the uncanny ability of the modern detective to trace the movements and establish the identities of so-called unknown persons. Since he is not infallible his score is imperfect; but his percentage of successes is remarkably high, considering the minotaur's maze of difficulties. The whole complicated mechanism of the police chain hums along on oiled bearings.
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
"Well," said the big man with a sigh, "I guess I'm being an old woman about this business. But I felt that I had to tell some one about it. I'm all clear?"
"As far as I am concerned, you are,' said Ellery genially. And then he rose and crushed his cigaret in an ashtray. "By the way, would you mind introducing me to this Varjian, Macgowan? It mightn't hurt to check up a bit."
"Then you do think . . ."
Ellery shrugged. "There's only one thing about it I don't like - the fact that it's coincidental. And I detest coincidences."
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
"I know nothing. I know," said Ellery sadly, "rather less than nothing, when it comes to that. I might, however, ask you what you know." Macgowan started. "I hadn't got round to you, you see. But you do you know something, and I think it would be wise for you to let me share your knowledge. I'm the repository for more secrets than you could throw at a dead cat, if that's the polite custom. I'm unofficial - blessed state, you understand. I tell what I think should be told and keep all the rest to myself."
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
"May I compliment you, Miss Temple, upon your choice of gown? It reminds me of a hydrangea or something, if that's what they have in China."
She laughed. "You mean the lotus blossom, I presume? Thank you, sir; that's the prettiest compliment I've had since I came west. Occidentals haven't much imagination when it comes to flattering women."
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
One of the main things I look for in young basketball players is if they understand the difference between fancy and good. A player can go in for a shot with all sorts of spectacular ball-handling moves - but it still only counts two points, the same as a simple, unspectacular layup.
Is there not the same understanding that must be gained from life? Do we want to be spectacular, or to be good? Being a good father who brings home the bacon from a boring desk job or factory position won't attract the media, but it will be pleasing to God.
"All right," said the Inspector, dropping his arms wearily. "I give up. Go the whole hog. Go puzzlin' your brains about Chinese oranges and Mexican tamales and alligator pears and Spanish onions and English muffins, for all I care! All I say is - can't a man eat an orange without some crackpot like you reading a mystery into it?"
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
"Berne is difficult. Smart as a whip. From all I've heard about him he combines three major characteristics: an uncanny nose for arty best-sellers, an inhuman facility at contract bridge, and a weakness for beautiful women. Dangerous combination."
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
"Don't make a row, father," said Kirk wearily. "These gentlemen are the police."
Dr. Kirk's white mustache lifted in a snarl. "Police! As if any one with two eyes and ears couldn't tell. Ears particularly. You can always tell a policeman by his indefatigable mangling of the simplest participles."
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
"Everything is backwards! Everything. Not just one movable object, mind you, or two or three, but everything. There's your rhyme. But how," he muttered, beginning to stride about again, "how about the reason? Why should everything have been turned backwards? What is it intended to convey, if it's intended to convey anything at all? Why, Brummer; eh?"
"I don't know," said the detective in a hushed voice. "I don't know, Mr. Queen."
Ellery paused in his stride to stare at him. Nye slumped against the door in attitude of complete befuddlement. "Nor do I, Brummer," said Ellery from behind clenched teeth, "yet."
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
To him there was something infinitely more substantial, if less delectable, in Miss Diversey. This woman was as unreal as a Garbo seen upon the silver screen. One might look, but not touch.
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
And then there was Marcella. Marcella! Snippy little fluff she was; in fifty years she'd be the feminine counterpart of her father. Oh, she had her good points, reflected Miss Diversey grudgingly; but then so have criminals. Adding her up, good and bad, you wouldn't have much.
(from The Chinese Orange Mystery, by Ellery Queen)
I heard Aunt Dollie's loud, stylish voice asking what on earth was the matter. Nobody answered, but that was usual with Aunt Dollie. She talked all the time and, like the music at a movie, you got so you noticed her only when she wasn't talking.
(from The Indigo Necklace, by Frances Crane)
"I suppose that was Uncle George, peeping out of their sitting-room window. I was only looking up at the ironwork, but goodness only knows what he will think. I wish he wouldn't pry so."
"Time on his hands, maybe."
"Darling!" I said, indignantly. I refuse to be noble about people who snoop. Uncle George snoops. You can call it insomnia or you can blame it on his heart, but I say Uncle George snoops."
(from The Indigo Necklace, by Frances Crane)
Maybe it was a ghost. A ghost is not terrifying the morning after, specially when it is only an idea of a ghost. A house a hundred and forty years old, and aristocratic in its conception and its occupancy rated a ghost.
(from The Indigo Necklace, by Frances Crane)
"Her skin was a glossy blue-black, a fine healthy looking prune color."
A description of Victorine Delacroix, the nurse from Martinique who is a character in The Indigo Necklace by Frances Crane.
A fool tries to look different; a clever man looks the same and is different.
(from The 39 Steps, by John Buchan)
Just as every dog is permitted one bite without having its sanity questioned, so, if you consider it in a broad-minded way, may every man be allowed to throw one flower-pot. But let the thing become a habit, and we look askance. This strange hobby of his appeared to be growing on Baxter like a drug, and Lord Emsworth did not like it at all. He had never before suspected his secretary of an unbalanced mind, but now he mused, as he tiptoed cautiously to the window, that the Baxter sort of man, the energetic restless type, was just the kind that does go off his head. Just some such calamity as this, his lordship felt, he might have foreseen. Day in, day out, Rupert Baxter had been exercising his brain ever since he had come to the castle - and now he had gone and sprained it. Lord Emsworth peeped timidly out from behind a curtain.
His worst fears were realized. It was Baxter, sure enough; and at ousled, wild-eyed Baxter incredibly clad in lemon-coloured pyjamas.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The voice, which trembled throatily, was that of the Hon. Freddie; and her first look at him told Eve, an expert diagnostician, that he was going to propose to her again.
"Well, Freddie?" said Eve resignedly.
The Hon. Frederick Threepwood was a young man who was used to hearing people say, "Well, Freddie?" resignedly when he appeared. His father said it; his Aunt Constance said it; all his other aunts and uncles said it. Widely differing personalities in every other respect, they all said, "Well, Freddie?" resignedly directly they caught sight of him.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
She was alone. It is a sad but indisputable fact that in this imperfect world Genius is too often condemned to walk alone - if the earthier members of the community see it coming and have time to duck.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Why do you think that cheery old Baxter, a delightful personality if ever I knew one, suspects me?"
"It's the way he looks at you."
"I know what you mean, but I attribute no importance to it. As far as I have been able to ascertain during my brief visit, he looks at everybody and everything in precisely the same way. Only last night at dinner I obserfed him glaring with keen mistrust at about as blameless and innocent a plate of clear soup as was ever dished up. He then proceeded to shovel it down with quite undisguised relish. So possibly you are all wrong about his motive for looking at me like that. It may be admiration."
"Well, I don't like it."
"Nor, from an aesthetic point of view, do I. But we mut bear these things manfully. We mut remind ourselves that it is Baxter's misfortune rather than his fault that he looks like a dyspeptic lizard."
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"'Certainly, McAllister,' I said, 'you may have your gravel path if you wish it. I make but one provision, that you construct it over my dead body. Only when I am weltering in my blood on the threshold of that yew alley shall you disturb one inch of my beautiful moss. Try to remember, McAllister,' I said, still quite cordially, 'that you are not laying out a recreational ground in a Glasgow suburb - you are proposing to make an eyesore of what is possibly the most beautiful nook in one of the finest and oldest gardens in the United Kingdom.' He made some repulsive Scotch noise at the back of his throat, and there the matter rests."
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"The same is Psmith. P-Smith."
"Peasmith, sir?"
"No, no. P-s-m-i-t-h. I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith. But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced. Smythe I look on as a cowardly evasion, nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name on in front y means of a hyphen. So I decided to adopt the Psmith. The P, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan. You follow me?"
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
From hard-won experience, Gordon Carlisle knew what his loved one could do with a vase. And this was a particularly large, hard, thick, solid vase, in every way superior to the one which a year ago she had bounced on his head. It was one of those vases which a Zulu chieftain would have been perfectly satisfied to make shift with while his knobkerrie was being cleaned at the club-maker's. The impact of it on a skull even as tough as that of Mr. Slattery could scarcely fail to produce results, especially when wielded by one who believed in taking the full Vardon swing and getting plenty of follow-through.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Yes. But apparently when he was doing some burgling the other night you planted him out on a window-sill and he didn't like it."
"Goosh!" The Senator paused for a moment, aghast. "You don't mean that was the fellow?"
"Yes."
"And he's sore?"
"Very sore. He says if you're drowning he'll throw you a flat-iron, but outside of that he doesn't want anything to do with you."
Senator Opal fermented silently. How true it is, he was feeling, that we never know how devastating the results of our most trivial actions may be. Just because he had done an ordinary everyday thing like putting a burglar on a window-sill, the sort of thing one does and forgets about next minute, ruin stared him in the face. He mourned, as many a stout fellow had mourned before him, over the irrevocability of the past.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Statisticians, who have gone carefully into the figures - the name of Schwertfeger of Berlin is one that springs to the mind - inform us that of young men who have just received a negative answer to a proposal of marriage (and with these must, of course, be grouped those whose engagements have been broken off) 6.08 per cent clench their hands and stare silently before them, 12.02 take the next train to the Rocky Mountains and shoot grizzlies, while 11.07 sit down at their desks and become modern novelists.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The emotions of a young man who, separated from the beautiful girl to whom his troth is plighted, suddenly finds himself quite unexpectedly reunited to her ought to be unmixedly ecstatic. Packy's could scarcely have been so described. In a situation which has furnished a congenial theme for more than one poet, he merely felt as if some muscular acquaintance had just punched him solidly on the nose.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
On paper, Blair Eggleston was bold, cold, and ruthless. Like so many of our younger novelists, his whole tone was that of a disillusioned, sardonic philanderer who had drunk the wine-cup of illicit love to its dregs but was always ready to fill up again and have another. There were passages in some of his books, notably Worm i' the Root, and Offal, which simply made you shiver, so stark was their cynicism, so brutal the force with which they tore away the vails and revealed Woman as she is.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Gardens, gay with flowers, lay before Mr. Carlisle, and beyond them woods and the Breton quaintness of the home farm: while above him, as he raised his eyes, there was a blue sky, flecked with little clouds; a few of the local birds going about their business; an insect or two; a couple of butterflies; and a pair of legs encased in grey trousers and terminating in two shoes of generous dimensions.
It was these last that enchained his attention. The spectacle of legs where no legs should be is always an arresting one. Mr. Carlisle, drinking them in, was frankly nonplussed. Rapidly running over in his mind the topography of the house, he discovered that their owner, if they had an owner and were not simply a stray pair of legs which had just been left about, must be sitting on the window-sill of the bedroom occupied by Senator Opal.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
There followed one of those awkward periods which occur when a man who is compelled to confine himself entirely to grimaces is endeavoring to convey his thoughts to a second party who is so overcome with amazement that he would scarcely be in a position to understand the plainest speech. Mr. Slattery contorted his features. Mr. Carlisle continued to gape. It was only at the end of about five minutes, just after Mr. Slattery had nearly dislocated his lower jaw in a particularly eloquent passage, that the marveling Confidence Trick artist realized that what his friend was silently appealing for was a ladder.
Any feminine voice speaking at such a moment would have startled Mr. Carlisle. What rendered this one so peculiarly disintegrating was the fact that he recognized it. Indeed, one might say that it had been ringing in his ears ever since the day, twelve months ago, when it had called him a two-timing piece of cheese - a remark which had been followed almost immediately by the descent on his frontal orbital bone of a large china vase.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
In these last few days, Blair Eggleston had undoubtedly not been showing himself at his best. Constant association with Senator Opal had induced in him a rather unattractive peevishness. Querulousness and self-pity had marked him for their own. At their stolen meetings, when Jane would have preferred to talk of love, he showed a disposition to turn the conversation to the subject of his personal misfortunes and keep it there. And it is trying for a sensitive and romantic girl, when she comes flitting through the laurels in the quiet evenfall to join her lover, to find that all he proposes to discuss is her father's habit of throwing oatmeal at him in the bedroom.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"So where do we go from here?" asked Packy. "All I am trying to do is to save you unpleasantness. If you wish me to leave, of course, I'll leave at once. But in that case how about Mrs. Gedge? Won't she write to the Vicomtesse asking what has become of her son? Of course she will. The whole story will then come out, and I don't see how the police can fail to track you down. And after that . . . Well, you can say what you like about the guillotine - the only known cure for dandruff and so on - but nobody's going to persuade me that you will enjoy it."
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"But I don't know how to be a valet!"
"It's quiet easy," Packy assured him. "A fellow with a brain like yours will pick it up in a minute. Just fold and brush and brush and fold and remember to say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir' and 'indeed, sir?' and very good, sir.' Oh, and one thing. Be very careful how you remove spots from the clothing. I knew a man who was fired for removing a spot from his employer's clothing."
"What a shame!' said Jane. "Why?"
"It was a ten-spot," explained Packy.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"He does the noises off."
"How do you mean, the noises off?"
"Well, when they have a sketch of something where they have to have noises, Blair makes them."
"I get you. You mean, somebody says, 'Hurrah, girls, here comes the Royal Bodyguard!' and Blair goes tramp, tramp, tramp."
"Yes. And all sorts of other noises. He's awfully clever at it."
Packy nodded.
"I can see why you want to marry him. The home can never be dull if at any moment the husband is able to imitate a motor horn or the mating-cry of a boll weevil."
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I wonder how Eggleston is getting on. About now, I should imagine, he is leaning on the bell and your father is shouting, 'Come on! Come on! Come on!' in that curious way of his that always remins me of a gorilla thumping its chest."
Jane knitted her brow anxiously.
"Father's a pretty hard egg, isn't he?"
"It is not for me to criticize your ather," said Packy primly, "but I can tell you this - if he ever asks me to come down a lonely alley with him to see his stamp collection I shall refuse with considerable firmness."
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Blair Eggleston's was a face which even at normal times had always a certain intellectual pallor. As he listened now, this pallor became more pronounced. It was as if the young novelist had been cast to play the Demon King in a pantomine and had assumed for the purpose a light green make-up. His lower jaw drooped feebly, like a dying lily.
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Well, do you like Mrs. Gedge?"
"No, I don't. She's a pest. Do you know what she's always after me to do? Use my pull to get that pop-eyed husband of hers made American Ambassador to France! A fellow who's a cross between a half-witted fish and a pneumonia germ. Well, I don't think I shall have much more trouble about that. I wrote her a letter the day before yesterday, telling her in so many words that I didn't think a man who couldn't count his shots at golf was a fit and proper representative for my country in the capital of a great and friendly power. You let a fellow like Gedge loose in Paris as an ambassador, and first thing you know he'd be giving America a black eye by being deported for cheating the French President at backgammon."
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"What a mob!" she said disgustedly.
"I like it," said Packy. "All this is helping me to understand the spirit which has made England what it is. I can see now what they mean when they talk of the bulldog breed. There was one fellow came navigating by here just now with an infant in each hand and attached to each infant, mark you, a Sealyham on a string. The last I saw of them, the port-side child had got tangled up with the starboard Sealyham, and the port-side Sealyham with the starboard child, and, take it for all in all, it was beginning to look like a big day for Dad. In my opinion, good clean fun, gratifyingly free from all this modern suggestiveness."
(from Hot Water, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You don't think I was really worrying because I had lost Aline, do you? I thought I was going to lose you, and it made me miserable. You couldn't expect me to say so in so many words, but I thought you guessed. I practically said it. Ashe! What are you doing?"
Ashe paused for a moment to reply.
"I am kissing you," he said.
"But you mustn't. There's a scullery-maid or something looking out of the kitchen window. She will see us."
Ashe drew her to him.
"Scullery-maids have few pleasures," he said. "Theirs is a dull life. Let her see us."
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
A man may be in sympathy with the modern movement for the emancipation of Women, and yet feel aggrieved when a mere girl proves herself a more efficient thief than he. Woman is invading Man's sphere more successfully every day, but there are till certain fields in which Man may consider that he is rightfully entitled to a monopoly, and the purloining of scarabs in the watches of the night is surely one of them. Joan, in Ashe's opinion, should have played a meeker and less active part.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The distant sound of the dinner-gong floated in.
"We settled that just in time," said Ashe. Mr. Peters regared him fixedly.
"Young man," he said slowly, "if, after all this you fail to recover my Cheops for me, I'll - I'll - by George, I'll skin you."
"Don't talk like that," said Ashe. "That's another thing you have got to remember. If my treatment is to be successful, you must not let yourself think in that way. You must exercise self-control mentally. You must think beautiful thoughts."
"The idea of skinning you is a beautiful thought," said Mr. Peters wistfully.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Almost more than physical courage the ideal adventurer needs a certain lively inquisitiveness, the quality of not being content to mind his own affairs: and in Ashe this quality was highly developed. From boyhood up he had always been interested in things which were none o his business. And it is just that attribute which the modern young man, as a rule, so sadly lacks.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"It's awkward. If I'm to make the thing clear to you, I've got to trust you and I don't know a thing about you. I wish I had thought of that before I inserted the advertisement."
Ashe appreciated the difficulty.
"Wouldn't you make an A B case out of it?"
"Maybe I could, if I knew what an A B case was."
"Call the people mixed up in it A and B."
"And forget halfway through who was which! No, I guess I'll have to trust you."
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The room assigned by the firm to their Mr. Boole for his personal use was a small and dingy compartment, redolent of that atmosphere of desolation which lawyers alone know how to achieve. It gave the impression of not having been swept since the foundation of the firm in the year 1786. There was one small window, covered with grime. It was one of those windows which you see only in lawyers' offices. Possibly, some reckless Mainprice or hairbrained Boole had opened it, in a fit of mad excitement induced by the news of the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, and had been instantly expelled from the firm. Since then no one had dared to tamper with it.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Oh, I've nothing against Freddie. He is practically an imbecile and I don't like his face, but apart from that he's all right."
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
There is every kind of restaurant in London, from the restaurant which makes you fancy you are in Paris to the restaurant which makes you wish you were. There are palaces in Piccadilly, quaint lethal chambers in Soho, and strange food factories in Oxford Street and the Tottenham Court Road. There are restaurants which specialize in ptomaine, and restaurants which specialize in sinister vegetable-messes. But there is only one Simpson's. Simpson's in the Strand is unique.
Here if he wishes, the Briton may, for the small sum of half a dollar, stupefy himself with food. . . . Its keynote is solid comfort. County clergymen, visiting London for the annual Clerical Congress, come here to get the one square meal which will last them till next year's Clerical Congress. Fathers and uncles with sons or nephews on their hands rally to Simpson's with silent blessings on the head of the genius who founded the place, for here only can the young boa-constrictor really fill himself at moderate expense. Militant suffragesttes comes to it to make up leeway after their last hunger strike.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Adams, I'm getting absent-minded. Have you ever noticed any traces of absent-mindedness in me before?"
"Oh no, your lordship."
"Well, it's deuced peculiar. I have no recollection whatsoever of placing that fork in my pocket. . . . Adams, I want a taxi-cab."
He glanced round the room, as if expecting to locate one by the fireplace.
"The hall-porter will whistle one for you, your lordship."
"So he will, by George, so he will. Good day Adams."
"Good day, your lordship."
The Earl of Emsworth ambled benevolently to the door, leaving Adams with the feeling that his day had not been ill-spent. He gazed almost with reverence after the slow-moving figure.
"What a nut!" said Adams to his immortal soul.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Like many fathers in his rank of life, the Earl of Emsworth had suffered much through that problem which - with the exception of Mr. Lloyd George - is practically the only fly in the British aristocratic amber - the problem of What To Do With The Younger Sons. It is useless to try to gloss over the fact, the Younger Son is not required. You might reason with a British peer by the hour - you might point out to him how, on the one hand, he is far better off than the male codfish, who may at any moment find itself in the distressing position of being called on to provide for a family of over a million; and remind him, on the other, that every additional child he acquires means a corresponding rise for him in the estimation of ex-President Roosevelt; but you would not cheer him up in the least. He does not want the Younger Son.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Listen, Mr. Marson. I was thrown on my own resources about five years ago. Never mind how. Since then I have worked in a shop, done typewriting, been on the stage, had a position as a governness, been a lady's maid -"
"A what? A lady's maid?"
"Why not? It was all experience, and I can assure you I would much rather be a lady's maid than a governess."
"I think I know what you mean. I was a private tutor once. I suppose a governess is the female equivalent. I have often wondered what General Sherman would have said about private tutoring, if he expressed himself so breezily about mere War."
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
One of my Pappy's Proverbs is the very obvious thought, "If you ask the wrong questions, then you will get the wrong answers." For at least most of the history of the world men have been in philosophical and even military conflicts because of issues surrounding race. And any way you approach it, that is one of the stupidest discussions anyone could ever have.
In the first place, don't even begin to talk to me about race unless you first define for me precisely what a "race" is. Can you do that? Can you? Think about it: every set of full siblings that has ever lived in the entire history of the world has had a different genetic make-up than every other set of full siblings. Were they different races? My first cousin came to visit us this week. He and I share common grandparents - on one side, but not on the other. Are we different races? But if you go back far enough in our genealogy, you likely will come to a point where you might say that we were of different races, because the further back you go, the more diverse our genealogy becomes, until it begins to dovetail into Noah.
Are Eskimos of a different race than Mongolians? Are Italians of a different race than Serbians? Define precisely what you are talking about before you try to get me into an argument. "Don't be ridiculous," you respond; "you know the difference between black and white." Oh, do I? Are the Hutus in Africa the same race as the aboriginal Australians and as the Tutsi (Watusi) people in Africa, many of whom are extraordinarily tall? The pygmies in southeast Asia are very short, but they are black. Which "blacks" are you talking about? Are pygmies and Tutsi of the same race merely because their skin is (approximately) the same color even though their average height may be three feet different?
Race has nothing to do with anything, other than physical characteristics, and every two people in the world have different physical characteristics. My two oldest grandsons married very lovely young ladies and upgraded the genetic base of our clan considerably in the process. Our "race" improved itself tremendously by their romantic attachments, in my humble opinion.
I suffer considerably from "white man's disease," which is a phrase denoting the fact that the average white man (supposedly) cannot jump as high as the average black man. So? During the time it took me to write this paragraph, several black and white men have been born and died, and thus the "average" changed by that much. I suspect that the average black man can jump higher than the average white man, but until you test every man in the world, how could you know for sure? But the average is changing every day, and what difference does it make, anyway? The world record holder in the high jump is a Cuban, and the man whose record he broke was a German. All of which proves what? In 1988, the man who held the world record was a German, and the man whose record he broke was Swedish. Did that mean that Germans and Swedes could jump higher than Africans? Do you see the convoluted nonsense that we can get into when we start discussing race?
People talk about the propriety of interracial marriages, but you can never get those who are opposed to them to define precisely what they mean by "race." Are Mexicans a different race than Germans? Are the Chinese a different race from Mongolians? If you oppose interracial marriages as a matter of principal, are you opposed to Chinese marrying Mongolians?
The bottom line is that people can do nothing to determine their genetic make-up, and what difference does it make anyhow? What does make a huge difference is the culture in which a person is raised. Race does not determine how an individual acts, but culture can have a profound influence upon how people act. There are many factors that determine how people act, but cultural factors are some of the most powerful. Just write this down: THE QUESTION TO BE ASKING IS NOT ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE IN RACES, BUT ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE IN CULTURES.
My observation has been that when people talk about disliking a particular race, what they mean is that there is something in that culture that is abhorrent or distasteful to them. There is nothing wrong with that: all of us have opinions. But put the blame where the blame belongs. People do not behave in a particular way because their skin is a particular color, but (to some extent) because of the culture in which they were raised.
And even when we get to cultures, the culture in which one is raised does not force him to act in a particular way. Hitler claimed that the Aryan race (whatever that is) was superior to all others, and that that fact justified him in persecuting those other races, which in the final analysis was actually a searing indictment of the Aryan race. But not all Germans acted like Hitler did, and none of them had to.
People ask, "Are interracial marriages wrong?" Again, before you ask me that question, define specifically what you mean by "race." And also, be aware that there is a huge difference between "strongly inadvisable" and "morally wrong."
Technically, I married a woman of a different race. Her genealogy is largely German; mine is largely Welsh. (Hitler might have considered that to be an interracial marriage.) And yes, there have been some difficult periods in our relationship when my emotional Welsh genetics ran up against her efficient German genetics. Occasionally, in frustration, I have been known to exclaim, "Welshmen should never marry Germans!" I did not really mean it, of course; but couples do need to go into a marriage with their eyes wide open with regard to the factors that will necessarily place stress upon the relationship; because the marriage is for better or for worse, till death us do part. And cultural factors definitely can affect a marriage negatively. And if a couple marries, they are morally obligated to the God before whom they took the oath to stay with it to the end.
I do know of white couples who have adopted black babies: black race, white culture. Which are they? And the babies couldn't help what they were in any case. Some people's logic is so strained that they would have it that those children could never marry anyone, because whichever way they went, the marriage would be mixed.
If a man is half Latino and half Scandanavian and a woman is half Oriental and half Arab, what does that mean with regard to their racial make-up? If you would oppose their marriage, upon what logical and moral grounds would you do so? It might be entirely possible that once you got back past their great-grandparents, both of them were entirely of African derivation.
Again, except for the case of full siblings, EVERY ONE OF US IS OF A DIFFERENT GENETIC DERIVATION. Cain's children's genetics were different than his - and thus it has ever been.
If you don't like a particular culture, then say so. There are many things in all cultures that could be improved, and we are not required to like those things and we have the freedom to express our dislikes. But place the cause where it deserves to be (on the culture), and not on the race, which is neither here nor there as far as behavior is concerned.
And ultimately, place the blame on man's sinful behavior.
"Will you tell me the story of your life, or shall I tell mine first?"
"I don't know that I have any particular story."
"Come, come!"
"Well, I haven't."
"Think again. Let us thrash this thing out. You were born!'
"I was."
"Where?"
"In London."
"Now we seem to be started. I was born in Much Middleford."
"I'm afraid I never heard of it."
"Strange! I know your birth-place quite well. But I have not yet made Much Middleford famous. In fact, I doubt if I ever shall. I am beginning to realize that I am one of the failures."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-six."
"You are twenty-six, and you call yourself a failure? I think that is a shameful thing to say."
"What would you call a man of twenty-six whose only means of making a living was the writing of Gridley Quayle stories? An empire builder?"
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The rules governing exercise in London are clearly defined. You may run, if you are running after a hat, or an omnibus; you may jump, if you do so with the idea of avoiding a taxi-cab or because you have stepped on a banana-skin. But if you run because you wish to develop your lungs or jump because jumping is good for the liver, London punishes you with its mockery. It rallies round and points the finger of scorn.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
He was a typical man of the trail. He drank when there was water, ate whenever there was food, rested whenever there was a moment to relax, well knowing days might come when none of the three could be had.
(from "In Victorio's Country," by Louis L'Amour)
It was a business that kept him reasonably well supplied with poker and whiskey money, but when all available cattle wore brands, it seemed to him the difference in branded and unbranded cattle was largely a matter of time. All the cattle had been mavericks after the war, and if a herd wore a brand it simply meant the cattleman had reached them before he did. Big Red accepted this as a mere detail, and a situation that could be speedily rectified ith a cinch ring, and in this he was not alone.
(from "In Victorio's Country," by Louis L'Amour)
He had no strength to lift a gun, no strength to hold a gun even, nor did he dare risk Marta's life by allowing her to use his gun. There was in his mind no thought of fair play, for there was nothing fair about any of this. It was murder, ugly and brutal, that they planned.
They had not thought of fair play when they ambushed him. Creet hadn't thought of fair play when he lured Gay Thomason into a chance at his back while Indian Frank sneaked up with his knife. If he was to save Marta and the ranch he had worked for, it must be now, and by any means.
(from "Valley of the Sun," by Louis L'Amour)
Smiling with commiseration, Ace Fernandez made his next-to-last gesture in a misspent life. He reached for the pot. As his eager hands shot out there was a sharp, tearing sound, and the white sleeve of the elder Fernandez ripped loudly, and there snugly against his arm was what is known in the parlance of those aware of such things as a sleeve holdout. In it were several cards, among them the missing nine, ten, and queen.
For one utterly appalling instant Ace Fernande froze, with what sinking of the heart you can imagine. Then he made the second of his last two gestures. He reached for his gun.
(from "Medicine Ground," by Louis L'Amour)
Together, Matt and Sue watched them walk away. "If you didn't want fifteen or twenty children," she suggested tenatively, "I know a girl who might be interested."
Matt grinned. "How about six?"
"I guess that's not too many."
He slipped his ram around her waist. "Then consider your proposal accepted.
(from "No Man's Mesa," by Louis L'Amour)
There was animosity in their eyes. The animosity of men who hear their cherished superstitions derided by a stranger. "You think again," Karr replied. "We folks won't allow it. It'll bring bad luck to all of us."
(from "No Man's Mesa," by Louis L'Amour)
"You want to live you better hightail it. They been waiting for you."
I shoved my hat back on my head and grinned at him. "Thanks, mister, but that sure wouldn't be neighborly of me, would it? Folks wait for me shouldn't miss their appointment. I reckon I'll go see what they have to say."
"They'll say it with lead." He glowered at me, but I could see he was friendly.
"Then I guess I can speak their language," I said. "Was a time I was a pretty fluent conversationalist in that language. Maybe I still am."
("We Shaped the Land With Our Guns," by Louis L'Amour)
Me, I'd never figured nor wanted the name of a gunfighter, but it was sort of natural-like for me to use a gun easy and fast. At sixteen a kid can be mighty touchy about not being growed up. I was doing a man's job on the NOB outfit when Ed Keener rawhided me into swinging on him. He went down, and when he came up he hauled iron. Next thing I knew Keeher was on the ground drilled dead center and I had a smoking gun in my hand with all the hands staring at me like a calf had suddenly growed into a mountain lion right before them.
(from "We Shaped the Land with our Guns," by Louis L'Amour)
All was quiet below. The Indians had started a fire and were killing one of their spare horses. Nothing an Apache liked better than horse meat except mule meat. . . . No Apache, he remembered irrelevantly, would eat fish.
(from Taggart, by Louis L'Amour)
Swante Taggart was not a man who loved gold, but he knew the feeling. It could get into the blood, and once it did a man was lost. He had known men who devoted their entire lives to following the ghost of gold through desert and mountain, into all the lost and remote places. He could appreciate the feeling, although he had long since come to realize there were some things not worth the cost. For him the yearning was for land, cattle, a place with water, trees and grass.
(from Taggart, by Louis L'Amour)
She law him remove his hat and run his fingrs through his hair. His horse stamped impatiently, eager to be moving, and when he shifted his weight in the saddle, the leather creaked. Suddenly she felt a wild desire to speak out, to question him, to find who he was and where he was going, but most of all, why he had stopped here.
Yet she was hesitant to speak or to move for fear that the slightest sound or movement would shatter the moment's spell and leave her with nothing. As long as they both were silent, the intangible communion between them existed, and he remained for her the stuff of dreams.
(from Taggart, by Louis L'Amour)
There is no other night that has the stillness and the beauty of the desert night . . . the sea when it is quiet comes closest to that stillness that is not stillness, but the sea is always alive. The Arctic, too, has its own beauty, but the desert is still with a curious alert stillness, a sense of listening, of poised awareness. Standing alone in the desert at night one feels that all about one there is this listening, an alertness for movement, for life, for change.
(from Taggart, by Louis L'Amour)
Studying the tower of rock, he knew he had already accepted its challenge. He was going after the gold.
But even as he made his dcision, he knew that there were two things he must guard against. The first was tolerance of danger that might bring carelessness, and the second ws going back for that little bit more that would kill him.
(from Taggart, by Louis L'Amour)
"When I'm investigating a murder, I hate to have too much sympathy with the corpse. Personal feelings cramp the style."
(from Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"Experience has taught me," said Peter, as they moved down the stair, "that no situation finds Bunter unprepared. That he should have procured The Times this morning by the simple expedient of asking the milkman to request the postmistress to telephone to Broxford and have it handed to the 'bus-conductor to be dropped at the post-office and brought up by the little girl who delivers the telegrams is a trifling example of his resourceful energy. But he would probably take it as a compliment if you were to refer the difficulty to him and congratulate him when he tells you that everything is provided for."
(from Busman's Holiday, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
He belonged to an ordered society, and this was it. More than any of the friends in her own world, he spoke the familiar language of her childhood. In London, anybody, at any moment, might do or become anything. But in a village - no matter what village - they were all immutably themselves; parson, organist, sweep, duke's son and doctor's daughter, moving like chessmen upon their alloted squares.
(from Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
He retired into the scullery, where Mrs. Ruddle, armed with a hand-bowl, was scooping boiling water from the copper into a large bath-can.
"You had better leave it to me, Mrs. Ruddle, to negotiate the baths around the turn of the stairs. You may follow me with the cans, if you please."
Returning thus processionally through the sitting-room he was relieved to see only Mr. Pufrett's ample base emerging from under the chimney-breast and to hear him utter loud groans and cries of self-encouragement which boomed hollow in the funnel of the brickwork. It is always pleasant to see a fellow-creature toiling still harder than one's self.
(from Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"May I express the hope that the present union may happily exemplify that which we find in a first-class port - strength of body fortified by a first-class spirit and mellowing through many years to a noble maturity. My lord and my lady - your very good health."
(from Busman's Holiday, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"To obey orders in this family has been my privilege for the last twenty years - a privilege which has been an unqualified pleasure, except perhaps when connected with the photography of deceased persons in an imperfect state of preservation."
(from Busman's Holiday, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"Let's keep her on if we can," said Harriet, a little confused at being deferred to (since Bunter, after all, was likely to suffer most from Mrs. Ruddle's peculiarities). "She always worked here and she knows where everything is, and she seems to be doing her best."
She glanced doubtfully at Peter, who said: "The worst I know of her is that she doesn't like my face, but that will hurt her more than it will me. I mean, you know, she's the one that has to look at it."
(from Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
In evening, furious trunk-call from Helen at Denver, having had wire from Peter and demanding what we meant by inconsiderate behaviour. Took great pleasure in telling her (at considerable length and her expense) nothing to thank but her own tactlessness.
(from Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
Helen obligingly presented us with a copy of the new form of marriage service, with all the vulgar bits left out - which was asking for trouble. Peter very funny about it - said he knew all about the "procreation of children," in theory though not in practice, but that the "increase of mankind" by any other method sounded too advanced for him, and that, if he ever did indulge in such dangerous amusements, he would, with his wife's permission, stick to the old-fashioned procedure. He also said that, as for the "gift of continence," he wouldn't have it as a gift, and had no objection to admitting as much.
(from Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
Naturally, I pay no attention to her snobbish nonsense about misalliances, which is ridiculous and out-of-date. Compared with the riff-raff we are getting in now from the films and the night-clubs, a country doctor's daughter, even with a poet in her past, is a miracle of respectability. If the young woman has brains and bowels, she will suit well enough.
(from Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
Berglund, sitting up now that he was out of gun range, looked at the shaggy-haired big man in the faded red shirt and the black vest. A sheepskin coat was tied back of the saddle and there was a Winchester in the boot. The big man looked unkempt and almost unreal, for there was about him a wild savagery that was somehow shocking.
Galloway backed off a few steps to where he could see the newcomer. "Howdy, Logan! Nice to see you!"
(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)
Charlie Farnum and me we started east for the herd, riding together. When we were a few miles off we started to sing, and we sang a dozen songs before we shut up and let it to the coyotes.
That Charlie Farnum had a better voice than me.
For that matter, so did the coyotes.
(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)
In the western lands a man had best be good friends with his horse or he may never have another friend or need of one. A man afoot in wild country is a man who may not live out the day . . . which is why horse stealing is the major sin. In many cases if you stole a man's horse you condemned him to death, a much less pleasant death than if you'd just up and shot him.
(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)
Sometimes of a night we'd set about the fire and talk. Nick Shadow had education, but he never tired to hear our mountain expressions. We'd lost a few of them coming west, but an argument or a quarrel we still called an upscuddle, which seemed almighty funny to Nick
(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)
It was not in me to complain of what had happened. A man shares his days with hunger, thirst, and cold, with the good times and the bad, and the first part of being a man is to understand that. Leastways, I had two hands, two feet and two eyes, and there were some that lacked these things.
(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)
How much can a man endure? How long could a man continue? These things I asked myself, for I am a questioning man, yet even as I asked the answers were there before me. If he be a man indeed, he must always go on, he must always endure. Death is an end to torture, to struggle, to suffering, but it i also an end to warmth, light, the beauty of a running horse, the smell of damp leaves, of gunpowder, the walk of a woman when she knows someone watches - these things, too, are gone.
(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)
Yet I was facing the same thing that faced every hunting the food-gathering people. Soon a man has eaten all that's available close by and the game grows wary. Until men learned to plant crops and herd animals for food they had of necessity to move on . . . and on.
(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)
One thing we learned. To make a start and keep plugging. When I had fights at school, the little while I went, I just bowed my neck and kept swinging until something hit the dirt. Sometimes it was me, but I always got up.
(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)
They could smell the blood from my feet and maybe the festering that was there. One of the wolves had gone over where I'd been lying and was smelling around to see what his hillside newspaper would tell him. I could guess he was reading a lot out there that I wished he didn't know.
(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)
"These are my world," he said. "Had I been born in another time or to another way of life I should have been a scholar. My father had this place and he needed sons to carry on, so I came back from Spain to this place. It has been good to me. I have seen my crops grow and my herds increase, and if I have not written words upon paper as I should like to have done, I have written large upon the page of life that was left open or me."
(from The Lonely Men, by Louis L'Amour)
Monday's don't make all that much difference, but I have long preferred sunny days to rainy days, except during times of drought. Rain means the grass is going to grow, and that means that I will have to be mowing the grass. Not fun!
There always had to be a man on watch, because Apaches were great horse thieves, though not a patch on the Comanches, who could steal a horse from under you whilst you sat in the saddle. You either kept watch or you found yourself afoot; and in the desert, unless you're almighty canny, that means you're dead.
(from The Lonely Men, by Louis L'Amour)
Travel in the desert cannot be haphazard. Every step a man takes in desert country has to be taken with water in mind. He is either heading for water, or figuring how far he will be from it if he gets off the trail. The margin of safety is narrow.
(from The Lonely Men, by Louis L'Amour)
The Shoo-Fly was crowded when I came in, but I turned some heads. I don't know if it was the gun battle the night before or the whisky I'd used for shave lotion, but they looked me over some.
(from The Lonely Men, by Louis L'Amour)
We were a mite out of town among some rocks and mesquite, and we'd been there a while when I heard somebody singing "Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," and Rocca pushed his hat back off his eyes. "Don't shoot," he said, grinning at me. "That's John J."
And it was. Battles came up through the brush and looked us over, and we told him what the score was.
"Where's Spanish?" he wanted to know, and Rocca told him.
"He found himself a gal down yonder. Her name is Conchita, and if she gets mad at him the Apaches will be a relief."
(from The Lonely Men, by Louis L'Amour)
What I wanted was a good used saddle, and there was a reason. I was of no mind to ride into Apache country with a squeaky new saddle. Now, any saddle will squeak a mite, and it's a comforting sort of sound, most times; but when there are Apache around any sound more than your breathing is liable to get you killed.
(from The Lonely Men, by Louis L'Amour)
With none to share our sorrows or regrets, we kept them to ourselves, and our faces were impassive. Men with no one to share their feelings learn to conceal those feelings. We often spoke lightly of things which we took very seriously indeed.
We were sentimental men, but that was our secret, for an enemy who knows your feelings is an enemy who has a hold on you. not all poker is played over a card table.
(from The Lonely Men, by Louis L'Amour)
For most of his life, Churchill had taken refuge in books. He had never liked school, finding it grim, joyless struggle, and himself more often than not at the bottom of his class. He wasn't well liked by the other boys, and his parents had all but abandoned him, so he was left with few places to turn for solace and friendship.
(from Hero of the Empire, by Candice Willard)
Although in the past week alone they had already lost two battles to an invisible and devastatingly effective enemy, the British army had continued to fight in line formation. Even Atkins marveled at the lines' uncompromising precision. "Each man [was] the appointed distance from his neighbour," he wrote, "and each row the appointed distance from the next." For the Boers, the sight was utterly bewildering, bearing no resemblance to their battles with the Zulu, from whom they had learned how to hide.
(from Hero of the Empire, by Candice Millard)
We rode into town with care, for we were all men with enemies. We rode with our guns loose in the holsters, ready to run or fight, as the case might be; but the street was empty, heavy with heat.
The temperature was over a hundred in the shade.
"All this town needs," John J. Battles said, "is more water and a better class of people."
(from The Lonely Men, by Louis L'Amour)
De Vincenzi had barely had time to notice Aurigi's ominously dark tone and aspect when the black telephone on the table rang three times. Angry and lacerating, like three desperate screams.
(from The Murdered Banker, by Augusto De Angelis)
In his fevered desire for escape, Churchill was far from alone. Ever since there have been prisoners and guards, men have tried everything, from climbing to digging, from bribery to brute force, to make their escape. In the end, if there is no hope that a prisoner will lose his shackles, he may lose his mind.
(from Hero of the Empire, by Candice Millard)
Staring at the Boer as he moved closer, rifle at the ready, poised to shoot should he make the slightest move to escape, Churchill knew that he had run out of options. He could be killed, or he could be captured. "Death stood before me," he wrote, "grim sullen Death without his light-hearted companion, Chance." The thought of surrender sickened him, but in this moment of fury frustration and despair, the words of Napoleon, whom he had long studied and admired, came to him: "When one is alone and unarmed, a surrender may be pardoned." Standing before the man who was now his captor, Churchill raised his hands in the air.
(from Hero of the Empire, by Candice Millard)
Here and there I'd come out ahead a few times, but it only made me careful. There's too much that can happen - the twig that deflects your bullet just enough, the time you don't quite get the right grasp on the gun butt, the dust that blows in your eyes. . . . Anyway, there's things can happen to the fastest of men and to the best shots. So I was cautious.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
"If we meet up with Indians, you might get taken."
"I'm not afraid. Not with you to care for me."
Now, that there remark just about threw me. I suppose nobody had ever said such a thing to me before, and it runs in the blood of a man that he should care for womenfolk. It's a need in him, deep as motherhood to a woman, and it's a thing folks are likely to forget. A man with nobody to care for is as lonesome as a lost hound dog, and as useless. If he's to feel of any purpose to himself, he's got to feel he's needed, feel he stands between somebody and any trouble.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
It was a big, wide, empty country, and a man couldn't hide easy. There were few people, and those few soon came to know about each other. Folks who have something to hide usually head for big cities, crowded places where they can lose themselves among the many. In open western country a man stood out too much.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
Of course, a man riding western country just naturally looks at it all. I mean he studies his back trail and off to the horizon on every side. Years later he would be able to describe every mile of it. As if it had been yesterday.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
This was a stretch of country I never did cotton to, this area between the Mississippi and the real West. It was in these parts that the thieves and outlaws got together.
(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)
Staring at the Boer as he moved closer, rifle at the ready, poised to shoot should he make the slightest move to escape, Churchill knew that he had run out of options. He could be killed, or he could be captured. "Death stood before me," he wrote, "grim sullen Death without his light-hearted companion, Chance." The thought of surrender sickened him, but in this moment of fury, frustration and despair, the words of Napoleon, whom he had long studied and admired, came to him: "When one is alone and unarmed, a surrender may be pardoned." Standing before the man who was now his captor, Churchill raised his hands in the air.
(from Hero of the Empire, by Cancide Millard)
It will be noticed, by the way, that in the struggle between Miss Climpson's conscience and what Wilkie Collins calls "detective fever," conscience was getting the worst of it and was winking at an amount of deliberate untruth which a little time earlier would have staggered it.
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"I am not the kind of person who reads other people's postcards." This is clear notice to all and sundry that they are, precisely, that kind of person. They are not untruthful; the delusion is real to them. It is merely that Providence has provided them with a warning rattle like that of the rattle-snake. After that, if you are so foolish as to leave your correspondence in their way, that is your own affair.
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
It occurred to him that it was rather early in the year for flies. There had been an advertising rhyme in the papers. Something about "Each fly you swat now means, remember, Three hundred fewer next September." Or was it a thousand fewer? He couldn't get the metre quite right.
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"It is bad for a human being to get to feel that he has any right whatever to dispose of another person's life to his own advantage. It leads him on to think himself above all laws. Society is never safe from the man who has deliberately committed murder with impunity. That is why - or one reason why - God forbids private vengeance."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"She might have found out who Murbles was. The advertisement which started the whole business was in his name, you know."
"In that case, why hasn't she attacked Murbles or you?"
"Murbles is a wise old bird. In vain are nets spread in his sight. He is seeing no female clients, answering no invitations, and never goes out without an escort."
"I didn't know he took it so seriously."
"Oh, yes. Murbles is old enough to have learnt the value of his own skin."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"By the way," he said to Miss Climpson, "you had better explain me in some way to Mrs. Budge, or she may be a bit inquisitive."
"But I have," replied Miss Climpson, with an engaging giggle, "when Mrs. Budge said there was a Mr. Parker to see me, of course I realized at once that she mustn't know who you were, so I said, quite quickly, 'Mr. Parker! Oh, that must be my nephew Adolphus.' You don't mind being Adolphus, do you? It's funny, but that was was the only name that came into my mind at the moment. I can't think why, for I've never known an Adolphus."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"The new Act makes inheritance on intestacy very much simpler," said Mr. Murbles, setting his knife and fork together, placing both elbows on the table and laying the index-finger of his right hand against his left thumb in a gesture of tabulation.
"I bet it does," interpolated Wimsey. "I know what an Act to make things simpler means. It means that the people who drew it up don't understand it themselves and that every one of its clauses needs a law-suit to disentangle it."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"I think this must be Brushwood Cross," resumed Parker, who had the map on his knee. "If so, and if it's not Covert Corner, which I thought we passed half an hour ago, one of these roads leads directly to Crofton."
"That would be highly encouraging if we only knew which road we were on."
"We can always try them in turn, and come back if we find we're going wrong."
"They bury suicides at cross-roads," replied Wimsey, dangerously.
"There's a man sitting under that tree," pursued Parker. "We can ask him."
"He's lost his way too, or he wouldn't be sitting there," retorted the other. "People don't sit about in the rain for fun."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"Teach the young woman not to be so mercenary," retorted Wimsey, with the cheerful brutality of the man who has never in his life been short of money.
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Lord Peter Wimsey was the brother of a Duke.)
"What is it, Mrs. Cropper?" said Lord Peter's voice in her ear. "Did you think you recognized somebody?"
"You're a noticing one, aren't you?" said Mrs. Cropper. "Make a good waiter - you would - not meaning any offense, sir, that a real compliment from one who knows."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
A curious intent look came into her eyes. Parker could not place it, but Wimsey recognized it instantly. He had seen it last on the face of a great financier as he took up his pen to sign a contract. Wimsey had been called to witness the signature, and had refused. It was a contract that ruined thousands of people. Incidentally, the financier had been murdered soon after, and Wimsey had declined to investigate the matter, with a sentence from Dumas: "Let pass the justice of God."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"There are very few houses in which somebody hadn't died sometime or other," said Miss Whittaker. "I really can't see why people should worry about it. I suppose it's just a question of not realizing. We are not sensitive to the past lives of people we don't know. Just as we are much less upset about epidemics and accidents that happen a long way off."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"After all, it isn't really difficult to write books. Especially if you either write a rotten story in good English or a good story in rotten English, which is as far as most people seem to get nowadays. Don't you agree?"
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"Of course, there's nothing new under the sun, as Solomon said, but after all, I daresay all those wives and porcupines, as the child said, must have soured his disposition a little, don't you know."
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
In her novel, Unnatural Death, Dorothy L. Sayers uses the word "shindy." That was a new one to me. It means "a noisy disturbance or quarrel."
"Do carry on. Have something to drink. It's a poor heart that never rejoices. And begin right at the beginning, if you will, please. I have a very trivial mind. Detail delights me. Ramifications enchant me. Distance no object. No reasonable offer refused."
(from Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"Peter [Lord Peter Wimsey], I am glad to say takes after his mother and me. True, he is all nerves and nose - but that is better than being all brawn and no brains like his father and brother, or a bundle of emotions, like Gerald's boy, Saint-George."
I liked that expression: "All nerves and nose." Being British, that probably would have been true of Lord Peter.
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy Sayers)
Red Dolan had seen them come and go, and when a youngster walked up to his bar, Dolan could almost tell within a few months how long he would last. The would-be tough ones rarely lasted long enough to have to shave more than once a week.
(from Flint, by Louis L'Amour)
