Baxter descends

     He could not analyse the sound, but the fact that there was any sound at all in such a place at such an hour increased his suspicions that dark doings were toward which would pay for investigation. With stealthy steps he crept to the head of the stairs and descended.

    One uses the verb "descended" advisedly, for what is required is some word suggesting instantaneous activity. About Baxter's progress from the second floor to the first there was nothing halting or hesitating. He, so to speak, did it now. Planting his foot firmly on a golf ball which the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, who had been practicing putting in the corridor before retiring to bed, had left in his casual fashion just where the steps began, he took the entire staircase in one majestic, volplaning sweep. There were eleven stairs in all separating his landing from the landing below, and the only ones he hit were the third and the tenth. He came to rest with a squattering thud on the lower landing, and for a moment or two the fever of the chase left him.

(From Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse. This is from the chapter entitled "Almost Entirely About Flower-Pots," which is perhaps Wodehouse's best.)

Well, Freddie?

    "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. Eve's words, therefore, and the tone in which they were spoken, did not damp him as they might have damped another. His only feeling was one of solemn gladness at the thought that at last he had managed to get her alone for half a minute.

    The fact that this was the first time he had been able to get her alone since her arrival at the castle had caused Freddie a good deal of sorrow. Bad luck was what he attributed it to, thereby giving the object of his affection less credit than was her due for a masterly policy of evasion. 

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

She's not so bad

 She was alone. It is a sad but indisputable fact that in this imperfect world Genius is too often condemned to walk along - if the earthier members of the community see it coming and have time to duck. Not one of the horde of visitors who had arrived overnight for the County Ball had shown any disposition whatever to court Miss Peavey's society.

One regrets this. Except for that slight bias towards dishonesty which led her to steal everything she could lay her hands on that was not nailed down, Aileen Peavey's was an admirable character; and, oddly enough, it was the noble side of her nature to which these coarse-fibred critics objected. Off Miss Peavey, the purloiner of other people's goods, they knew nothing; the woman they were dodging was Miss Peavey, the poetess.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Don't ask his name!

 "I have only just found out your name, Mr. McTodd," she said at length.

Psmith nodded. "It is always thus," he said. "Passing through this life, we meet a fellow-mortal, chat awhile, and part; and the last thing we think of doing is to ask him in a manly and direct way what his label is. There is something oddly furtive and shamefaced in one's attitude towards people's names. It is as if we shrank from probing some hideous secret. We say to ourselves, 'This pleasant stranger may be a Snooks or a Buggins. Better not inquire.'"

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Dishing out the baloney

 "You know Miss Peavey's work, of course?" said Lady Constance, smiling pleasantly on her two celebrities.

"Who does not?" said Psmith courteously.

"Oh do you?" said Miss Peavey, gratification causing her slender body to perform a sort of ladylike shimmy down its whole length. "I scarcely hoped that you would know my name. My Canadian sales have not been large."

"Quite large enough," said Psmith. "I mean, of course," he added with a paternal smile, "that, while your delicate art may not have a universal appeal in a young country, it is intensely appreciated by a small and select body of the intelligentsia."

And if that was not the stuff to give them, he reflected with not a little complacency, he was dashed.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Rough on hangovers

 Miss Peavy often had this effect on the less soulful type of man, especially in the mornings, when such men are not at their strongest and best. When she came into the breakfast-room of a country house, brave men who had been up a bit late the night before quailed and tried to hide behind newspapers. She was the sort of woman who tells a man who is propping his eyes open with his fingers and endeavouring to correct a headache with strong tea, that she was up at six watching the dew fade off the grass, and didn't he think that those wisps of morning mist were the elves' bridal-veils. She had large, fine, melancholy eyes, and was apt to droop dreamily.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The confidence of the amateur criminal

 "Even if the little enterprise meets with disaster, the reflection that I did my best for the young couple will be a great consolation to me when I am serving my bit of time in Wormwood Scrubbs. It will cheer me up. The jailers will cluster outside the door to listen to me singing in my cell. My pet rat, as he creeps out to share the crumbs of my breakfast, will wonder why I whistle as I pick the morning's oakum. I shall join in the hymns on Sundays in a way that will electrify the chaplain. That is to say, if anything goes wrong and I am what I believe is technically termed 'copped.' I say 'if,'" said Psmith, gazing solemnly at his companion. "But I do not intend to be copped. I have never gone in largely for crime hitherto, but something tells me I shall be rather good at it. I look forward confidently to making a nice, clean job of the thing. And now, Comrade Threepwood, I must ask you to excuse me while I get the half-nelson on this rather poisonous poetry of good old McTodd's.

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

For the uninformed, Wormwood Scrubbs is a prison London for adult males. Oakum is a preparation of tarred fibers used in shipbuilding.

Such an insignificant task

 "You'll do it?"

"I will."

"Of course," said Freddie awkwardly, "I'll see that you get a bit all right. I mean . . . ."

Psmith waved his hand deprecatingly. "My dear comrade Threepwood, let us not become sordid on this glad occasion. As far as I am concerned, there will be no charge."

"What! But look here . . . ."

"Any assistance I can give will be offered in a purely amateur spirit. I would have mentioned before, only I was reluctant to interrupt you, that Comrade Jackson is my boyhood chum, and that Phyllis, his wife, injects into my life the few beams of sunshine that illumine the dreary round. I have long desired to do something to ameliorate their lot, and now that the chance has come I am delighted. It is true that I am not a man of affluence - my bank manager, I am told, winces in a rather painful manner whenever my name is mentioned - but I am not so reduced that I must charge a fee for performing, on behalf of a pal, a simple act of courtesy like pinching a twenty thousand pound necklace."

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

But not fish!

 "I suppose you get ideas for your poetry from all sorts of things," said Lord Emsworth, nobly resisting the temptation to collar the conversation again. He was feeling extremely friendly towards this poet fellow. It was deuced civil of him not to be put out and huffy at being left alone in the smoking-room.

 "From practically everything," said Psmith, "except fish."

"Fish?"

"I have never written a poem about fish."

"No?" said Lord Emsworth, again feeling that a pin had worked loose in the machinery of the conversation.

"I was once offered a princely sum," went on Psmith, now floating happily along on the tide of his native exuberance, "to write a ballad for the Fishmonger's Gazette entitled 'Herbert the Turbot.' But I was firm. I declined."

"Indeed?" said Lord Emsworth.

"One has one's self-respect," said Psmith.

"Oh, decidedly," said Lord Emsworth.

"It was painful, of course. The editor broke down completely when he realized that my refusal was final. However, I sent him on with a letter of introduction to John Drinkwater, who, I believe, turned him out quite a good little effort on the theme."

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Oh, you meant a carnation!

 "I asked you to wear a pink chrysanthemum. So I could recognize you, you know."

"I am wearing a pink chrysanthemum. I should have imagined that that was a fact that the most casual could hardly have overlooked."

"That thing?" The other gazed disparagingly at the floral decoration. "I thought it was some kind of cabbage. I meant one of those little what-d'you-may-call-its that people do wear in their button-holes."

"Carnation, possibly?"

"Carnation! That's right."

Psmith removed the chrysanthemum and dropped it behind his chair. He looked at his companion reproachfully.

"If you had studied botany at school, comrade," he said, "much misery might have been averted. I cannot begin to tell you the spiritual agony I suffered, trailing through the metropolis behind that shrub."

(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Anything but fish!

 "But my uncle and I are about to part company. From now on he, so to speak, will take the high road and I'll take the low road. I dine with him tonight, and over the nuts and wine, I shall hand him the bad news that I propose to resign my position in the firm. I have no doubt that he supposed he was doing me a grand turn by starting me in his fish business, but even what little experience I have had of it has convinced me that it is not my proper sphere. The whisper flies round the clubs, 'Psmith has not found his niche.'"

(from Enter Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Of butlers and pigs

 Beach was in his pantry. From time to time he sipped port, from time to time raised his eyes thankfully heavenwards. He, too, was thinking kindly of Gally. Mr. Galahad might ask a man to steal rather more pigs than was agreeable, but in the larger affairs of life, such as making cheques for five hundred pounds grow where none had been before, he was a rock to lean on.

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Move a pig? Who couldn't!

 "Yes," said Penny. "Isn't Parsloe's pig pretty big?"

"Enormous. It bestrides the narrow world like a Colossus."

"Then how are you going to remove it?"

"My dear child, pigs have rings through their noses. This facilitates pulling and hauling."

"You'll never be able to do it."

"What do you mean, "I'll never be able to do it? Of course I'll be able to do it. When Puffy Benger and I stole old Wivenhoe's pig the night of the Bachelor's Ball at Hammer's Easton, we had to get it up three flights of stairs before we could put it in Plug Basham's bedroom, and we found the task an absurdly easy one. A little child could have led it. Why, my nephew Ronald, from motives which I have not the leisure to go into now, once stole the Empress, and I resent the suggestion that I am incapable of performing a task within the scope of a young poop like Ronnie Fish. Never be able to do it, forsooth!" said Gally, burning with honest indignation. "I can do it on my head. I can do it blindfolded, with one arm tied behind me. So if you wish to be in on this, Penny Donaldson, get moving.  Come, Watson, come. The game is afoot!"

(from Pigs Have Wings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

More in depth than we are

 During the last fifteen years of [William Jenning Bryan's] life, he again found a series of issues which proved susceptible to easy dichotomization: entry into war, prohibition, soman suffrage, the teaching of evolution as fact. So far as he was concerned, all these issues had but two sides. Most other politicians of the day shared that view. In a day when politicians think routinely of the thirty-second television commercial, it seems peculiar to criticize Bryan for oversimplifying issues, for his favorite campaign tactic was to present himself to as many people as possible, to speak to them for an hour or more, then to publish those speeches and distribute them as widely as possible.

(from A Righteous Cause, by Robert W. Czerny)

He left a big footprint

 [William Jennings] Bryan's compelling voice and engaging smile won a personal following in 1896, which he could call upon in future years in support of his principles. By that dramatic campaign, he became the symbol of the transformation taking place within his party, and hence, within politics more generally. By spending the next twenty-nine years traveling about the nation, speaking to grass-roots leaders of his party, lecturing to throngs of citizens, sending out his views through his newspaper, The Commoner, and boldly battling in convention after convention, he built upon the following he had created in 1896 to carve out an unusual role in American politics. He spent little time in office - only four years in the House of Representatives and twenty-seven months as secretary of state. Nonetheless, the Commoner left a greater impression on public policy than at least ten of the fifteen presidents who held office during his lifetime.

(from A Righteous Cause, by Robert W. Czerny)

Let them do their own stumbling

 [William Jennings Bryan] did not claim that the majority could do no wrong, only that "the people have a right to make their own mistakes."

(from A Righteous Cause, by Robert W. Cherny)

Whom does the government serve?

 "Shall the people control their own Government and use that Government for the protection of their rights and for the promotion of their welfare? Or shall the representatives of predatory wealth prey upon a defenseless public, while the offenders secure immunity from subservient officials whom they raise to power by unscrupulous methods?" (William Jennings Bryan)

I wish we had someone with the eloquence and boldness of Bryan today.

The foundation of tyranny

 "Once admit that some people are capable of self-government and that others are not and that the capable people have a right to seize upon and govern the incapable and you make force - brute force - the only foundation of government and invite the reign of a despot." (William Jennings Bryan)

Name them after me

More than seven hundred babies were named for [William Jennings] Bryan during the year [of his first presidential campaign], including three sets of triplets, each named "William," "Jennings," and "Bryan."

(from A Righteous Cause, by Robert W. Cherny)