Speaking for yourself

     "I do not like your tone, Reginald."

    "Never mind about my tone. I'll attend to my tone. Of all the bally low hounds that ever stepped you are the lowest. So this is what the friendship of years amounts to, is it? You crawl in here and try to cut me out with the girl I love."

    "Well, dash it -"

    "That is quite enough."

    "But, dash it -"

    "I wish to hear no more."

    "But, dash it, I love her, too. It's not my fault if you happen to love her, too, is it? I mean to say, if a fellow loves a girl and another fellow loves her, too, you can't expect the fellow who loves the girl to edge out because he happens to be acquainted with the fellow who loves her, too. When it comes to Love, a chap has got to look out for his own interests, hasn't he? You didn't find Romeo or any of those chaps easing away from the girl just to oblige a pal, did you? Certainly not."

(from Young Men in Spats, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

He would have preferred a gentle breeze

     When large, earnest men with simple, orderly minds fall desperately in love with small, reckless, impulsive girls whose motto is "Anything goes," the result is not infrequently to make them feel as if their souls had been stirred up with a pole; and in conveying the impression that he was labouring under a nervous strain Bill lister in no way deceived his public. Ever since the tempestuous entry into his life of Prudence Garland, he had been feeling almost without interruption rather as one might imagine a leaf to feel when caught up and whirled about in an autumn gale.

    Bill's was essentially a simple, orderly mind. Nature had intended him to be one of those men to whom love, when it comes, comes gently and gradually, progressing in easy stages from the first meeting in rigidly conventional circumstances to the decorous wedding with the ushers showing friends and relatives into the ringside pews. If ever there was a man born to be the morning-coated central figure in a wedding group photograph, it was William Galahad Lister.

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Name your doctor

     "Harley Street," he said to the driver. "And don't spare the horses."

    Harley street, as everybody knows, is where medical men collect in gangs, and almost every door you see has burst out into a sort of eczema of brass plates. At a house about halfway down the thoroughfare the following members of the healing profession had elected to mess in together: Hartley Rampling, P. P. Borstal, G. V. Cheesewright, Sir Abercrombie Fitch-Fitch, and E. Jimpson Murgatroyd. The one Tipton was after was E. Jimpson Murgatroyd.

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Don't let him pick her friends!

 "I know I should make the most searching inquiries about any young man whom I heard calling Veronica a dream rabbit. I don't wonder Dora is uneasy. She tells me Prudence has been seeing a great deal of Galahad recently, and goodness knows whom he may not have introduced to her. Galahad's idea of a suitable friend for an impressionable young girl might quite easily be a race-course tout or a three-card-trick man."

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

What to expect from a Full Moon

 Money is always important in the solution of Blandings impasses, but here it is ubiquitous. Not only do Bill's and Prue's problems require a fiscal solution, but the hopes of the Wedges are shaped by Tipton Plimsoll's fortune, Freddie Threepwood pursues an immense dogfood order like some Ahab hunting a mercantile Moby Dick, and in the end Lord Emsworth must literally purchase his peace of mind.

Only Galahad and his spiritual sister, the Empress, rise above the mercenary approach, the great pig responding solely to simple greed and the aging rake moved by sympathy for star-crossed love and a pure, almost ascetic devotion to creating maximum chaos.

(from the Preface to P. G. Wodehouse's Full Moon, written by D. R. Benson)

Cutting it thin

         Mabry began to eject shells from his gun and to reload. Only a solitary bullet had remained in his gun. As he loaded up there was absolute silence. He was conscious then of the cottonwood leaves whispering in the cool morning air. He was conscious that his cheek stung and that otherwise he was unwounded.

    Once more he had come through. How many breaks could a man get?

(from Heller With a Gun, by Louis L'Amour)

Trust your instincts

     "You're borrowing trouble, King. They'd be afraid to attempt anything now.

    He did not argue, yet King Mabry had that old, uneasy feeling. The whole woods out there were dark, but they did not feel empty, and the hunted man learns to trust his senses. On too many occasions they had saved his life.

(from Heller With a Gun, by Louis L'Amour)

Lost on the landscape

 Day after day the wagons had plodded on, and day after day the snow-covered hills fell behind, the streams were crossed, the lonely camps abandoned to the wilderness. And day after day she seemed to dwindle, to grow less. The vans were tiny things, their bright-colored sides tawdry in the stillness and snow. All was immensity where they seemed to crawl at a snail's pace into the vastness beyond belief.

(from Heller With a Gun, by Louis L'Amour)

Had something else to do

 His shoulders filled the doorway as he went out. For several minutes after he was gone nobody said anything.

"Knew him in Dodge," Williams said suddenly, "and again in Utah. He's salty."

"Has he really killed so many men?"

"He has. Killed one at Doan's store. Fellow name of Les Benham was going to cut Mabry's herd. Mabry said he wasn't."

"Did they cut it?"

"Too busy burying Les Benham."

(from Heller With a Gun, by Louis L'Amour)

He must have overestimated

     "Come far?"

    "No."

    The hostler puffed on his pipe. He had never seen this man before and it was indiscreet to ask questions, but the hostler was a curious man - and he knew that beat-up buckskin.

    He gestured. "Ain't in good shape."

    "Better shape than the man who rode him."

    Griffin, the hostler remembered, was considered a very salty customer in some circles. He must have cut himself into the wrong circle.

(from Heller With a Gun, by Louis L'Amour)

Instincts

     The hunter and the hunted - these two are kin. Their senses are alert to the same stimuli, awaken in the same far-off sounds. A shadow in the wrong place, a flicker of sun reflection, a creak of leather - each may be a warning.

    And for these things and a thousand others the senses of hunter and hunted are alert. Often the exact warning is not recognized; it is a subconscious perception.

    So King Mabry now waited for the snow veil to break once more. He had learned to trust his instincts. Attention might lag, reason might fail, but the instincts were first born and would be the last to die.

(from Heller with a Gun, by Louis L'Amour)

Aunts are worse than cobras down the chimney

 His heart was heavy. It was a kindly heart, and from the very first it had been deeply stirred by the stormy romance of Mr. Ronald and his young lady. He wished that life were as the writers of the detective stories, to which he had become to addicted, portrayed it. In those, no matter what obstacles Fate might interpose in the shape of gangs, shots in the night, underground cellars, sinister Chinamen, poisoned asparagus and cobras down the chimney, the hero always got his girl. The significance of the presence in the library of Lady Constance Keeble and Lady Julia Fish had not escaped him. He feared that it meant the worst.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Be sure to stand downwind

     "Beach, go and bring Pirbright here."

    "He shall do nothing of the kind," said Lady Constance sharply. "The idea of bringing Pirbright into the library!"

    It was not often that Beach found himself in agreement with the chatelaine of Blandings, but he could not but support her attitude now. Like all butlers, he held definite views on the sanctity of the home and frowned upon attempts on the part of the outside staff to enter it - especially when, like Pirbright they smelt so very strongly of pigs. Five minutes of that richly scented man in the library, felt Beach, and you would have to send the place to the cleaner's.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A friend of pigs

     "You think you can cope with this pig?"

    "Certainly. I am not afraid of pigs. Pigs like me."

    At these words, Monty found his respect for a breed of animal which he had always rather admired waning a good deal. No animal of the right sort, he felt, could like Lord Tilbury.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not a successful interview

     He had never, he realized, been exactly what you might call sanguine when making his way to the Emsworth Arms to plead with Lord Tilbury to act like a sportsman and a gentleman. All the ruling of the form-book, he knew, was against him. And yet he had nursed, despite the whisperings of Reason, a sort of thin, sickly hope. This hope the proprietor of the Mammoth had slain dead within five minutes of his arrival.

    When Monty had claimed consideration on the ground that it was through no fault of his own that he was not charging in, manuscript in hand, Lord Tilbury had remained mute and stony. When he had gone on to point out that Pilbeam could not have got the thing but for him, Lord Tilbury had uttered a sharp, sneering snort. And when, as happened a little farther on in the scene, Monty had called his former employer a fat, double-crossing wart-hog, the latter had terminated the interview by walking away with his hands under his coat-tails.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not fond of pigs

He had only himself to blame - that was what made it all the more bitter. If he had not so casually given his casting vote in favour of shifting this infernal pig to new quarters, he would not now have been faced by a problem which every moment seemed to become more difficult of situation.

 For Pilbeam was afraid of pigs. He seemed to remember having read somewhere that if you go into a pig's sty and the pig doesn't now you it comes for you like a tiger and chews you to ribbons. Greedy though he was for Lord Tilbury's gold, something told him that never, no matter how glittering this reward, would he be able to bring himself to go into that sty in quest of the manuscript, guarded as it now was by this ravening beast. The Prodigal Son might have mixed with these animals on a clubby basis, but Percy Pilbeam knew himself to be incapable of imitating him.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Champagne for a snake

 Beach withdrew to execute the commission. His demeanour, as he passed from the hall, was downcast. There in a nutshell, he was feeling, you had the tragedy of a butler's life. His not to reason why; his not to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving; his but to go and bring bottles of champagne to marcelled-haired snakes to whom he would greatly have deserved to supply straight cyanide.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Beach is NOT pleased

     "Her ladyship is expressing a desire to see you, sir," said Beach, regarding him with restrained horror and loathing. 

    The recent exchange of remarks between Monty Bodkin and the Hon. Galahadd in his presence had confirmed the butler in his view that of all the human serpents that ever wriggled their way into a respectable castle this private investigator was the worst. Knowing what the manuscript of the Reminiscences meant to Mr. Ronald and his betrothed, Beach, had he been younger and slimmer and in better condition and not a butler, could - for two pins - have taken Percy Pilbeam's unpleasant neck in his hands and twisted it into a lover's knot.

    His physique and his circumstances being as they were, he merely delivered the message he had been instructed to deliver. As far as any hostile demonstration was concerned, he had to be content with letting his lip curl.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A man set up for a fall

 In his bearing, as he hurried along the path that skirted the kitchen garden - in the oily smirk beneath his repellent moustache, in the jaunty tilt of his snub nose, even in the terraced sweep of the brilliantine swamps of his corrugated hair - there was the look of a man who is congratulating himself on a neat bit of work. Brains, reflected Percy Pilbeam - that was what you needed in this life. Brains and the ability to seize your opportunity when it was offered to you.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not a good choice

 Pausing halfway to the door, the Hon. Galahad saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face. An expression a little like that of a young Hindu fakir who, having settled himself on his first bed of spikes, is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Come on, thunderstorms!

     "Thunderstorms often upset people. Are you afraid of thunder?"

    "Oh, no."

    "Lots of girls are. I knew one once who, whenever there was a thunderstorm, used to fling her arms around the neck of the nearest man, hugging and kissing him till it was all over. Purely nervous reaction, of course, but you should have seen the young fellows flocking round as soon as the sky began to get a little overcast. Gladys, her name was. Gladys Twistleton. Beautiful girl with large, melting eyes. Married a fellow in the Blues called Harringay. I'm told that the way he used to clear the drawing-room during the early years of their married life at the first suspicion of a rumble was a sight to be seen and remembered."

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Verbal free for all

 This spirited outburst led to a certain amount of rather confused debate. Lord Tilbury said that he did not propose to have young popinjays taking that tone with him; while Monty, on his side, wished to be informed who Lord Tilbury was calling a popinjay. Lord Tilbury then said that Monty was a bungler and Monty said, Well, dash it, Lord Tilbury had told him to be a burglar, and Lord Tilbury said he had not said "burglar," he had said "bungler," and Monty said, What did he mean, bungler, and Lord Tilbury explained that by the expression "bungler," he had intended to signify a wretched, feckless, blundering, incompetent imbecile. He added that an infant of six could have found the manuscript, and Monty, in a striking passage, was making a firm offer to give any bloodhound in England a shilling if it could do better than he had done, when the argument stopped as abruptly as it had started. Childish voices had begun to prattle close at hand and it was evident that one of those picnic parties from the river was approaching.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Stick with the Emsworth Arms

 The advice one would give to every young man starting life is, on arriving in Market Blandings on a warm afternoon, to go to the Emsworth Arms. Good stuff may be bought there, and of all the admirable hostelries in the town it possesses the largest and shadiest garden. Green and inviting, dotted about with rustic tables and snug summerhouses, it stretches all the way down to the banks of the river; so that the happy drinker, already pleasantly in need of beer, may acquire a new and deeper thirst from watching family parties toil past in rowboats. On a really sultry day a single father, labouring at the oars of a raft loaded down below the Plimsoll mark by a wife, a wife's sister, a cousin by marriage, four children, a dog, and a picnic basket, has sometimes led to such a rush of business at the Emsworth Arms that seasoned barmaids have staggered beneath the strain.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The Pelican Club

 In Lord Emsworth's eyes, as he gazed at his brother, there was the reverential look of a disciple at the feet of his master. He had always known, he told himself, that as a practical adviser in matters having to do with the seamier side of life the other was unsurpassed. It was the result, he supposed of the environment in which he had spent his formative years. Membership of the old Pelican Club might not elevate a man socially, but there was no doubt about its educative properties. If it dulled the moral sense, it undoubtedly sharpened the intellect.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A non-dieter

 Between Empress of Blandings and these two human beings who ministered to her comfort there was a sharp contrast in physique. Lord Emsworth was tall and thin and scraggy, Pirbright tall and thin and scraggier. The Empress, on the other hand, could have passed in a dim light for a captive balloon, fully inflated and about to make its trial trip. The modern craze for slimming had found no votary in her. She liked her meals large and regular, and had never done a educing exercise in her life.

(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Take a chair

     And a moment late in came a bloke. Obviously not the Colonel, for Myrtle and the O.B.E. gave no sign of recognition. Then who? The man was a perfect stranger to me. However, I played the host.

    "Good afternoon," I said, affably.

    "Afternoon," said the bloke.

    "Take a chair," I said.

    "I'm going to take all the chairs," he said. "And the sofa, too. I'm from the Mammoth Furnishing Company, and the cheque for the deposit on this stuff has been returned Refer to Drawer."

    It is not too much to say, Corky, that I reeled. Yes, laddie, your old friend tottered and would have fallen had he not clutched at a chair. And, from the look in the bloke's eyes, it began to seem that my chances of clutching at that particular chair were likely to be very soon a thing of the past.

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

Just get it open!

     "Go on! What are you waiting for?" I fumbled at the handle.

    "I don't seem to be able to get the door open," I explained meekly.

    "Tchah!" said Miss Ukridge, swooping down. One of the rooted convictions of each member of the human race is that he or she is able without difficulty to open a door which has baffled their fellows. She took the handle and gave it a vigorous tug. The door creaked, gut remained unresponsive.

    "What's the matter with the thing?" exclaimed Mis Ukridge petulantly.

    "It's stuck."

    "I know it's stuck. Please do something at once. Good gracious, Mr. Corcoran, surely you are at least able to open a drawing-room door."

    It seemed, put in that tone of voice, a feat sufficiently modest for a man of good physique and fair general education; but I was reluctantly compelled to confess, after a few more experiments, that it was beyond my powers. This appeared to confirm my hostess in the opinion, long held by her, that I was about the most miserable worm that an inscrutable Providence had ever permitted to enter the world.

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

Thrown out on my ear again

    You know the position of affairs when I go to live with my Aunt Julia. She feeds me and buys me clothes, but for some reason best known to her own distorted mind it is impossible to induce her to part with a little ready cash. The consequence was that, falling in love with Mabel as I had done and needing a quid or two for current expenses, I had had to rely on my native ingenuity and resource. It was absolutely imperative that I should give the girl a few flowers and chocolates from time to time, and this runs into money. So, seeing a rather juicy clock doing nothing on the mantelpiece of the spare bedroom, I had sneaked it off under my coat and put it up the spout at the local pawnbroker's. And now, apparently, in some devious and underhanded manner she had discovered this.

    Well, it was no good arguing. When my Aunt Julia is standing over you with her sleeves rolled up preparatory to getting a grip on the scruff of your neck and the seat of your trousers, it has always been my experience that words are useless. The only thing to do is to drift away and trust to Time, the great healer. Some forty minutes later, therefore, a solitary figure might have been observed legging it to the station with a suitcase. I was out in the great world once more.

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

Get it over with!

 Of all the uncounted millions who in their time have listened to bands playing "Poet and Peasant," few can ever have listened with such a restless impatience as did Frederick Fitch-Fitch on this occasion. Time was flying. Every second was precious. At any moment disaster might befall. And the band went on playing as if it had taken on a life-job. It seemed to him an eternity before the final oom-pom-pa.

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

He obviously wanted two girlfriends

     "Oh, Freddie!" she cried. "The worst has happened."

    Freddie gulped. "Rackstraw?"

    "Yes," said Annabel. "But how did you know about him?"

    "He came to me, bubbling over a good deal with veiled menaces and what not," explained Freddie. He frowned, and eyed her closely. "Why didn't you tell me you had been engaged to that bird?"

    "I didn't think you would be interested. It was just a passing girlish fancy."

    "You're sure? You didn't really love this blighted prestidigitator?"

    "No, no. I was dazzled for a while, as any girl might have been when he sawed me in half, but then you came along and I saw that I had been mistaken, and that you were the only man in the world for me."

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

Invalidic arrogance

 For though few people are aware of it - so true is it that half the world does not know how the other half lives - there is no section of the community in which class-consciousness is so rampant as among invalids. The ancient Spartans, one gathers, were far more cordial towards their Helots, and the French aristocrat of pre-Revolution days tended to be a little stand-offish with his tenantry, but their attitude was almost back-slapping compared with that of - let us say - the man who has been out in Switzerland taking insulin for his diabetes towards one who is simply undergoing treatment from the village doctor for an ingrowing toenail. And this was particularly so, of course, in those places where invalids collect in gangs - Baden-Baden, for example, or Hot Springs, Virginia, or, as in Sir Aylmer's case, Droitgate Spa.

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

Why beetles?

 "A frown darkened her brow, and she kicked petulantly at a passing beetle." (from Eggs Beans and Crumpets)

We find expressions similar to this occasionally in the writings of Sir Pelham Wodehouse. This raises the question, Did the author carry a grudge against beetles? Had he had a particularly disturbing confrontation with one in his childhood? One wonders.

Spend money? Me?!

     "Stamps" he said. "Yes, I am always ready to add to my collection, provided that what I am offered is of value and the price reasonable. Had you any figure in mind for these of yours, my dear Mulliner?"

    Anselm said that he had been thinking of something in the neighbourhood of five thousand pounds, and Sir Leopold shook from stem to stern like a cat that has received half a brick in the short ribs. All his life the suggestion that he should part with large sums of money had shocked him.

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

It is possible to be both

    "They were engaged?" asked the Stout and Mild, beginning to get it.

    "Secretly. Anselm did not dare to inform her uncle of the position of affairs, because all he had to marry on was his meagre stipend. He feared the wrath of that millionaire philatelist."

    "Millionaire what?" asked a Small Bass.

    "Sir Leopold," explained Mr. Mulliner, "collected stamps."

    The Small Bass said that he had always thought that a philatelist was a man who was kind to animals.

    "No," said Mr. Mulliner, "a stamp collector. Though many philatelists are, I believe, also kind to animals."

(from Eggs Beans and Crumpets, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse0

No enthusiasm for the proposal

     "Could you lend me a tenner, Oofy, old man?"

    "No, I couldn't."

    "It would save my life."

    "There," said Oofy, "you have put your finger on the insuperable objection to the scheme. I see no percentage in your being alive. I wish you were a corpse, preferably a mangled one. I should like to dance on your remains."

    Bingo was surprised. "Dance on my remains?"

    "All over them."

    Bingo drew himself up. He had his pride.

    "Oh?" he said. "Well, in that case, tinkerty tonk."

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

He's OK

 Mrs. Bingo's Pekes were all in bed when he got there, and when he went and sprang the little stranger on them he was delighted with the ready affability with which they made him one of themselves. Too often, when you introduce a ringer into a gaggle of Pekes, there ensues a scrap like New Year's Eve in Madrid; but tonight, after a certain amount of tentative sniffing, the home team issued their OK, and he left them all curled up in their baskets like so many members of the Athenaeum.

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

Doing himself well

 Well, as it turned out, Oofy's appetite was the reverse of blunted. The extraordinary position in which he found himself - guest and not host to a fellow-member of the Drones - seemed to have put an edge on it. It is not too much to say that from the very outset he ate like a starving python. The light, casual way in which he spoke to the head waiter about hothouse grapes and asparagus froze Bingo to the marrow. And when - from force of habit, no doubt - he called for the wine list and ordered a nice, dry champagne, it began to look to Bingo as if the bill for this binge was going to resemble something submitted to Congress by President Roosevelt in aid of the American Farmer.

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

Those ganglions again!

     "Ah-hum!" said Mr. Pickering

    The effect on Lord Wetherby was remarkable. To hear someone clear his throat at the back of a dark room, where there should rightfully be no throat to be cleared, would cause even your man of stolid habit a passing thrill. The thing got right in among Lord Wetherby's highly sensitive ganglions like an earthquake. He uttered a strangled cry, then dashed out and slammed the door behind him.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

I only did what cats do

At the right time and in the right frame of mind man is capable of stoic endurances that excite wonder and admiration. Mr. Pickering was no weakling. He had once upset his automobile in a ditch, and had waited for twenty minutes until help came to relieve a broken arm, and he had done it without a murmur. But on the present occasion there was a difference. His mind was not adjusted for the occurrence. There are times when it is unseasonable to touch a man on the leg. This was a moment when it was unseasonable in the case of Mr. Pickering. He bounded silently into the air, his whole being rent asunder as by a cataclysm.

He had been holding his revolver in his hand as a protection against nameless terrors, and as he leaped he pulled the trigger. Then with the automatic instinct for self-preservation, he sprang back into the bushes, and began to push his way through them until he had reached a safe distance from the danger zone.

James, the cat, meanwhile, hurt at the manner in which his friendly move had been received, had taken refuge on the outhouse roof. He mewed complainingly, a puzzled note in his voice. Mr. Pickering's behaviour had been one of those things that no fellow can understand. The whole thing seemed inexplicable.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

But not monkeys!

But of the other members of the party, Dudley Pickering was unhappy because he feared that burglars were about to raid the house; Roscoe Sherriff because he feared they were not; Claire because, now that the news of the engagement was out, it seemed to be everybody's aim to leave her alone with Mr. Pickering, whose undiluted society tended to pall. And Lord Wetherby was unhappy because he found Eustace, the monkey, a perpetual strain upon his artistic nerves. It was Eustace who had driven him to his shack in the woods. He could have painted far more comfortably in the house, but Eustace had developed a habit of stealing up to him and plucking the leg of his trousers; and an artist simply cannot give of his best with that sort of thing going on.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Low on the acetylene of love

 Dudley Pickering was not a self-starter in the motordrome of love. He needed cranking. He was that most unpromising of matrimonial material, a shy man with a cautious disposition. If he overcame his shyness, caution applied the foot-brake. If he succeeded in forgetting caution, shyness shut off the gas. At Reigelheimer's some miracle had made him not only reckless but un-selfconscious. Possibly the Dream of Psyche had gone to his head. At any rate, he had been on the very verge of proposing to Claire when the interruption had occurred, and in bed that night, reviewing the affair, he had been appalled at the narrowness of his escape from taking a definite step. Except in the way of business, he was a man who hated definite steps. He never accepted even a dinner invitation without subsequent doubts and remorse. The consequence was that, in the days that followed the Reigelheimer episode, what Lord Wetherby would have called the lamp of love burned rather low in Mr. Pickering, as if the acetylene were running out.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Don't argue with bees

     "Don't you wear a veil for this sort of job?"

    As a rule Elizabeth did. She had reached a stage of intimacy with her bees which rendered a veil a superfluous precaution, but until today she had never abandoned it. Her view of the matter was that, though the inhabitants of the hives were familiar and friendly with her by this time and recognized that she came among them without hostile intent, it might well happen that among so many thousands there might be one slow-witted enough and obtuse enough not to have grasped this fact. And in such an event a veil was better than any amount of explanations, for you cannot stick to pure reasons when quarrelling with bees.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Oh, that egg!

 Elizabeth entered Nutty's room and, seating herself on the bed, surveyed him with a bright, quiet eye that drilled holes in her brother's uneasy conscience. This was her second visit to him that morning. She had come an hour ago, bearing breakfast on a tray, and had departed without saying a word. It was this uncanny silence of hers even more than the effects - which still lingered - of his revels in the metropolis that had interfered with Nutty's enjoyment of the morning meal. Never a hearty breakfaster, he had found himself under the influence of her wordless disapproval physically unable to consume the fried egg that confronted him. He had given it one look; then, endorsing the opinion which he had once heard a character in a play utter in somewhat similar circumstances - that there was nothing on earth so homely as an egg - he had covered it with a handkerchief and tried to pull himself round with hot tea.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

An epic crash!

     He had not reckoned with Heinrich Joerg. Indeed, he was not aware of Heinrich Joerg's existence. Yet fate was shortly to bring them together, with far-reaching results. Heinrich Joerg had left the Fatherland a good many years before with the prudent purpose of escaping military service. After various vicissitudes in the land of his adoption - which it would be extremely interesting to relate, but which mut wait for a more favourable opportunity, he had secured a useful and not ill-recompensed situation as one of the staff of Reigelheimer's Restaurant. He was, in point of fact, a waiter, and he comes into the story at this point bearing a tray full of glasses, knives, forks, and pats of butter on little plates. He was setting a table for some new arrivals, and in order to obtain more scope for that task he had left the crowded aisle beyond the table and come round to the edge of the dancing floor.

    He should not have come out on to the dancing floor. In another moment he was admitting that himself. For just as he was lowering his tray and bending over the table in the pursuance of his professional duties, along came Bill at his customary high rate of speed, propelling his partner before him, and for the first time since he left home Heinrich was conscious of a regret that he had done so. There are worse things than military service!

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Those sisters!

 It is a curious law of Nature that the most undeserving brothers always have the best sisters. Thrifty, plodding young men, who get up early, and do it now, and catch the employer's eye, and save half their salaries, have sisters who never speak civilly to them except when they want to borrow money.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just call him crazy

     "Was he sane, do you think?"

    "Absolutely, for legal purposes. We have three opinions from leading doctors - collected by him in case of accidents, I suppose - each of which declares him perfectly sound from the collar upward. But a man can be pretty far gone, you know, without being legally insane, and old Nutcombe - well, suppose we call him whimsical. He seems to have zigzagged between the normal and the eccentric.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

All Nichols? How about some Dimes?

     It was stimulating. The probability was that all Jerry Nichols wanted to tell him was that he had received stable information about some horse or had been given a box for the Empire, but for all that it was stimulating.

    Bill looked at his watch. He could spare half an hour. He set out at once for the offices of the eminent law firm of Nichols, Nichols, Nichols, and Nichols, of which aggregation of Nicholses his friend Jerry was the last and smallest.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Putting one over on old Bill

 When she became engaged to Bill she had reached a point where she could obtain without difficulty good parts in the touring companies of London successes, but beyond that it seemed it was impossible for her to soar. It was not, perhaps, a very exhilarating life, but, except to the eyes of love, there was nothing tragic about it. It was the cumulative effect of having a mother in reduced circumstances and grumbling about it, of being compelled to work and grumbling about that, and of achieving in her work only a semi-success and grumbling about that also, that - backed by her looks - enabled Claire to give quite a number of people, and Bill Dawlish in particular, the impression that she was a modern martyr, only sustained by her indomitable courage.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Blue blood, empty pockets

     "I wish," said Claire, fretfully, leading the way down the grillroom stairs, "that you wouldn't let all London sponge on you like this. I keep telling you not to. I should have thought that if anyone needed to keep what little money he has got it was you."

    Certainly Lord Dawlish would have been more prudent not to have parted with even eleven shillings, for he was not a rich man. Indeed, with the single exception of the Earl of Wetherby, whose finances were so irregular that he could not be said to possess an income at all, he was the poorest man of his rank in the British Isles.

(from Uneasy Money, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The light begins to dawn

     It seemed to her that she was very much alone now. She was marooned on a desert island of froth and laughter. Everything that mattered she had lost.

    Even Bill had gone from her. The bitter justice of Kirk's words came home to her now in her time of clear thinking. It was all true. In the first excitement of the new life he had bored her. She had looked upon Mrs. Porter as a saviour who brought her freedom together with an easy conscience. It had been so simple to deceive herself, to cheat herself into the comfortable belief that all that could be done for him was being done, when, as concerned the essential thing, as Kirk had said, there was no child of the streets who was not better off.

    She tramped her round of social duties mechanically. Everything bored her now. The joy of life had gone out of her. She ate the bread of sorrow in captivity.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Going against the big boys

     Her father, she knew, had always had a high opinion of Bailey's business instincts, and that was good enough for her. She could not know how completely revolutionized the latter's mind had become since the old man's death, and how freedom had turned him from a steady young man of business to a frenzied financier.

    It was common report now that Bailey was taking big chances. Some went so far as to say that he was "asking for it," "it" in his case being presumably the Nemesis which waits on those who take big chances in an uncertain market. It was in the air that he was "going up against" the Pinkney-Dowd group and the Norman-Graham combination, and everybody knew that the cemeteries of Wall Street were full of the unhonoured graves of others who in years past had attempted to do the same.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

What tangled knots we weave

 He walked on, raising his face to the storm, finding in it a curious relief. A magical coolness had crept into the air, and with it a strange calm into his troubled mind. He looked back at the scene through which he had passed as at something infinitely remote. He could not realize distinctly what had happened. He was only aware that everything was over, that with a few words he had broken his life into small pieces. Too impatient to unravel the tangled knot, he had cut it, and nothing could mend it now.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Basil is suspect

 Bailey hated Basil. Men, as a rule, did, without knowing why. Basil's reputation was shady, without being actually bad. He was a suspect who had never been convicted. New York contained several husbands who eyed him askance, but could not verify their suspicions, and the apparent hopelessness of ever doing so made them look on Basil as a man who had carried smoothness into the realms of fine art. He was considered too gifted to be wholesome. The men of his set, being for the most part amiably stupid, resented his cleverness.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Nothing to it!

 Mr. Penway was good enough to approve of his progress. Being free from any morbid distaste for himself, he attributed that progress to its proper source. As he said once in a moment of expansive candor, he could, given a free hand and something to drink and smoke while doing it, make an artist out of two sticks and a lump of coal.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

It can't be too soon for me

     "Burn them!" said Mr. Penway, lighting a cigar with the air of one restoring his tissues after a strenuous ordeal. "Burn the lot. They're awful. Darned amateur nightmares. They offend the eye. Cast them into a burning fiery furnace."

    Kirk nodded. The criticism was just. It erred, if at all, on the side of mildness. Certainly something had happened to him since he perpetrated those daubs. He had developed. He saw things with new eyes.

    "I guess I had better start right in again at the beginning," he said.

    "Earlier than that," amended Mr. Penway.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Revolt

     There are moments when a man on parole forgets his promise. All thought of rules and prohibitions went from Kirk. He rose from his seat, grabbed his son with both hands, and hugged him. We cannot even begin to estimate the number of bacilli which must have rushed, whooping with joy, on to the unfortunate child. Under a microscope it would probably have looked like an Old Home Week. And Kirk did not care. He simply kept on hugging. That was the sort of man he was - thoroughly heartless.

    "Bill, you're great!" he cried.

    Bill had been an amazed party to the incident. Nothing of this kind had happened to him for so long that he had forgotten there were children to whom this sort of thing did happen. Then he recollected a similar encounter with a bearded man down in the hall when he came in one morning from his ride in the automobile. A moment later he had connected his facts.

    This man who had no beard was the same man as the man who had a beard, and this behaviour was a personal eccentricity of his. The thought crossed his mind that Aunty Lora would not approve of this.

    And then, surprisingly, there came the thought that he did not care whether Aunty Lora approved or not. He liked it, and that was enough for him.

    The seeds of revolt had been sown in the bosom of William Bannister.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Mrs. Partington

 In his novel, "The Coming of Bill," P. G. Wodehouse refers to "Mrs. Partington sweeping back the Atlantic Ocean with her broom." This evidently refers to an illustration published in Puck magazine in 1912 showing a woman labeled "Blue Law Enforcement" standing on the shore at the ocean, using a broom labeled "Raids on Gambling Houses" to sweep puddles labeled "Police Graft" and "Gambling House Profits" back into the ocean as a wave labeled "The Tendency of Man to Gamble" rolls toward shore.

How toadies become snobs

 Ruth was generally ready to join him in ridiculing their new acquaintances. She had none of that reverence for the great and the near-great which, running to seed, becomes snobbery.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

All for the sake of love

     And if Steve ha had the pluck to tell Mamie that he loved her, as he stood before her dripping with the water which he had suffered in silence rather than betray her, she would have fallen into his arms. For Steve at that moment had all the glamour for her of the self-sacrificing hero of a moving-picture film. He had not actually risked death for her, perhaps, but he had taken a sudden cold shower-bath without a murmur - all for her.

    Mamie was thrilled. She looked at him with the gleaming eyes of devotion.

    But Steve, just because he knew that he was wet and fancied that he must look ridiculous, held his peace.

    And presently, his secret still locked in his bosom, and his collar sticking limply to his neck, he crept downstairs, avoiding the society of his fellow man, and slunk out into the night where, if there was no Mamie, there were, at any rate, dry clothes.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The life of the idle rich

    "There's and angel for you. Now I'll fix you a cocktail as a reward."

    

    "Well, mind you sterilize it carefully."

    

    Ruth laughed. Having gained her point she could afford to. She made the cocktail and brought it to him.

    "And now I'll be off and dress, and then you can take me out to lunch somewhere."

    

    "Aren't you dressed?"

    "My goodness, no. Not for going to restaurants. You forget that I'm one of the idle rich now. I spend my whole day putting on different kinds of clothes. I've a position to keep up now, Mr. Winfield."

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

    

Irresistible force

     "I shall bear up," said Kirk, when this fact was brought home to him. "I mistrust your aunt Lora as I should mistrust some great natural force which may become active at any moment and give you yours. An earthquake, for instance. I have no quarrel with your Aunt Lora in her quiescent state, but I fear the developments of that giant mind. We are better off without her."

    "All the same," said Ruth loyally, "she's rather a dear. And we ought to remember that, if it hadn't been for her, you and I would never have met."

    "I do remember it. And I'm grateful. But I can't help feeling that a woman capable of taking other people's lives and juggling with them as if they were india-rubber balls as she did with ours is likely at any moment to break out in a new place. My gratitude to her is the sort of gratitude you would feel toward a cyclone if you were walking home late for dinner and it caught you up and deposited you on your doorstep.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A fairly normal child

    This remarkable child had a keen sense of humour. Thus he seldom began to cry in his best vein till the small hours of the morning; and on these occasions he would almost invariably begin again after he had been officially pronounced to be asleep. His sudden grab at the hair of any adult who happened to come within reach was very droll, too.

    As to his other characteristics, he was of rather an imperious nature. He liked to be waited on.  He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. The greater part of his attention being occupied at his period with the important duty of chewing his thumb, he assigned the drudgery of life to his dependents. Their duties were to see that he got up in the morning, dressed, and took his tub; and after that to hang around on the chance of general orders.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

How to get married

     "You know, Kirk, we are both frightfully extravagant. I'm sure we are spending too much money as it is. You know you sold out some of your capital only the other day."

    "It was only that once. And you had set your heart on that pendant. Surely to goodness, if I drag you away from a comfortable home to live in a hovel, the least I can do is to - "

    "You didn't drag me. I just walked in and sat down, and you couldn't think how to get rid of me, so in despair you married me."

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Nothing wrong with being a teapot

    It was not so long ago, she reflected with pride, that she had induced Ruth to refuse to marry Basil Milbank - a considerable feat, he being a young man of remarkable personal attractions and a great match in every way. Mrs. Porter's objection to him was that his father had died believing to the last that he was a teapot.

    There is nothing evil or degrading in believing oneself a teapot, but it argues a certain inaccuracy of the thought processes, and Mrs. Porter had used all her influence with Ruth to make her reject Basil. It was her success that first showed her how great that influence was. She had come now to look on Ruth's destiny as something for which she was personally responsible - a fact which was noted and resented by others, in particular Ruth's brother Bailey, who regarded his aunt with a dislike and suspicion akin to that which a stray dog feels towards the boy who saunters towards him with a tin can in his hand.

(from The Coming of Bill, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The truth is a rare thing

     "Been waiting long?"

    "Long enough to have eaten if I'd thought of it. As it was, all I got was the coffee."

    That made the second lie. She had not been here for some time, and she had not come right here from home. He tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the visit to the Upshaw Building was so much a habit that she did not consider it. Still, it was out of her way in coming here.

    He wanted to believe her. Maybe that's why cops get cynical - they are lied to so often.

(from "I Hate To Tell His Widow," by Louis L'Amour)

Thought he was too smart

 Pete Merrano was like all of his kind who live by fear and terror. When that failed, they're backed into a corner. He had been sure he would win. He had still been sure when things started going against him because he simply believed he was too smart. He had forgotten the old adage that cops can make many mistakes, a crook need only make one.

(from "Stay Out of My Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)

A weird situation

     "Are you Mr. Ramsey?" He neither spoke nor blinked, and I stepped pat the old woman and stopped abruptly. I was staring into the eyes of a dead man.

    Turning, overcome with horror, I looked at the old woman who was puttering among some dirty dishes. "Don't mind him," she said. "Earl was never one for talking. Only when he takes the notion."

    My skin crawled. She turned her head and stared at me with expressionless eyes. Gray hair straggled about a face that looked old enough to have worn out two bodies, and her clothing was drab, misshapen, and soiled. She fumbled at her pocket, staring at me.

    It gave me the creeps. The hot, stuffy room and that aged and obviously imbecilic woman and her dead son.

    Stepping past the table, I saw the knife. It had been driven into the left side of his back, driven up from below as he sat at the table, and driven to the hilt. I touched the hand of Earl Ramsey. It was cold.

    The old woman as puttering among the dishes, unaware and unconcerned.

(from "Stay Out of My Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)

A resolute lady

     "Who are you?" she repeated.

    "Let's say that I am an old army friend of Sam Bradley's."

    Her eyes hardened. "Oh? So you admit you're one of them?" Before I could reply, she said, "I'll just call the police."

    "It might be the best idea. But why don't you pout that gun down and let' talk this over. Sam left word he wanted to see me, and if you're a friend of his, we should compare notes. When he said he was in trouble, I hurried right over."

    "I'll bet you did! Now back against the wall. I am going to use the telephone, and if you have any doubts whatever I'll use this gun, just start something."

    I had no doubts.

(from "Stay Out of my Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)

    

Quite a scrap

     He had been coming in, and I used his impetus. He went over flying and hit the table in front of me with a crash; the table collapsed like a sick accordion and with about the same sound. Being on my knees, I grabbed the legs of the nearest man with Milly and jerked hard. His head hit the table when he fell, and I was up fast to see Milly break away and the other man clawing at his hip.

    It was a bad move, leaving him as open as a Memphis crap game, and I threw my right down the groove with everything on it but my shoelaces. When a man grabs suddenly at his hip, his face automatically comes forward. His did, and brother, it was beautiful!

    His face came forward as if it had a date with my fist, and it was a date they kept. You could have heard the smack of that fist clear into the street, and his feet went from under him as if they'd been jerked from behind. He went down to all fours. Naturally, I didn't kick him. In police reports that might not look good, so when I sort of bent over him, my knee sort of banged into his temple. It was what might have been termed a fortuitous accident.

(from "With Death in his Corner," by Louis L'Amour)

She grew up!

     "If you can help me," I said, "it would mean a lot. Garzo was my pal."

    "Sure, I know. I'm Mildred Casey, remember? I lived down the block from Rock's old man. You two used to fix my bike."

    That made me look again. Blue eyes, the ghosts of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and shabby clothes. An effort to be lively with nothing much to be lively or happy about, but great courage. She still had that, with a fine sort of pride. There was hurt in her eyes where her heart showed, eyes that had kept looking at men wondering if this was the right one.

(from "With Death in His Corner," by Louis L'Amour)

Boot Hill

     "You won't see the town until we get close."

    "Near that mesa?"

    "Right up against it. Small town, about four hundred people when they're all home. Being off the state highway, no tourists ever go there. Nothin' to see, anyway."

    "No boot hill?" Nearly all of the little mining towns in this section have a boot hill, and from the look of them, shooting up your neighbors must have been the outstanding recreation in the old days.

    "Oh, sure. Not many in this one, though. About fifteen or twenty with markers, but they buried most of them without any kind of a slab. This boot hill couldn't hold a candle to Pioche. Over there they buried seventy-five before the first one died of natural causes.

(from "The Hills of Homicide," by Louis L'Amour)

Not an excuse, but closer than some

    From the beginning he had been inclined to sympathize with the financier who was writhing in the net cast about him by an unscrupulous blackmailer. Of all the crimes in the book he detested blackmail most, and it had been difficult to work up any real feeling about Sara Morton's death since learning of her attempted extortion scheme.

    True, blackmail didn't excuse murder in the eyes of the law, but in Harsh's case, considering his enormous loss if she exposed him, it was a pretty fair excuse.    

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

Elaborate preparations

     "I want to handle this so you'll know I haven't double-crossed you no matter what happens. The Golden Cock bar will be crowded, and I'll mingle in the thickest of the crowds. The police may tail me and be watching. Don't speak to me or give yourself away in any way. Have a brief note wadded up to slip into my right hand, telling me where to meet you. I'll stay in plain sight after you give it to me, and won't communicate with anyone until I go out to my car and read the note. You can follow me to make sure I'm not being tailed. Then you'll know I'm on the level." 

    Shayne paused, feeling uncertain, yet hopeful. He knew it wasn't very good, but it was the best he could think of on the spur of the moment.

    "That sounds like a lot of melodramatic hocus-pocus," his caller complained.

    "That's the way it has to be if you want to see me tonight," he said flatly. "At the Golden Cock in half an hour." He cradled the receiver before the man could make further protests.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne," by Brett Halliday)

Bluffing his way

     "I think I know your name," Shayne lied tranquilly.

    "I assure you that I did not kill her, Shayne," His voice broke on a falsetto key like the changing voice of a teenaged boy.

    "But you have no alibi for before seven?" Shayne said.

    "Precisely. And even though that alibi is sufficient, you can readily understand that a police investigation would bring the whole story to light . . . and ruin me."

    "Naturally," Shayne scowled heavily, wondering how long he could keep the man talking without giving away the fact that he hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne," by Brett Halliday)

It wasn't suicide

     "Sara Morton is dead. She was evidently dead when you and Beatrice and I tried to rouse her around nine o'clock in her hotel room."

    "Suicide?"

    "I said murder, Mike," Gentry reminded him.

    "But you didn't say Sara Morton."

    "Gentry glanced up at Shayne with eyes like streaked granite. "Suicides don't jab a pair of long-bladed shears into the jugular and then go in the bathroom to wash the blood off the weapon, carry it back in the room and then lie down to die. Not without dropping a little blood along the way they don't."

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

How to stop the tears?

 Her head rested against the reporter's bony shoulder and his arm was around her. Tears streamed down her face, and Rourke's slaty eyes held the bewildered look of a man who had failed to stop a woman from crying.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

I could do with less of those kinds of compliments

     "It was like you to say that, Bertie. I respect you for it."

    "Oh, no."

    "Yes. You have a splendid, chivalrous soul."

    "Not a bit."

    "Yes, you have. You remind me of Cyrano."

    "Who?"

    "Cyrano de Bergerac."

    "The chap with the nose?"

    "Yes."

    I can't say I was any too pleased. I felt the old beak furtively. It was a big on the prominent side, perhaps, but, dash it, not in the Cyrano class. It began to look as if the next thing this girl would do would be to compare me to Schnozzle Durante.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Risky business

 It was a dashed tricky thing, of course, to have to decide on the spur of the moment. I was reading in the paper the other day about hose birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Chandler

 In fact, I and the corn chandler, who was looking a bit flagged, I thought, as if he had had a hard morning chandling the corn, were beginning to doze lightly when things suddenly brisked up, bringing Gussie into the picture for the first time.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A corn chandler was a corn merchant. The earliest use dates back to the late 1600s.

Seventh grade boys on a warm day

     The grammar school at Market Snodsbury had, I understand, been built somewhere in the year 1416, and, as with so many of these ancient foundations, there still seemed to brood over its Great Hall, where the afternoon's festivities were to take place, not a little of the fug of the centuries. It was the hottest day of the summer, and though somebody had opened a tenative window or two, the atmosphere remained distinctive and individual.

    In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The air was sort of heavy and langourous, if you know what I mean, with the scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[This passage brings to mind so vividly many scenes of yesteryear. There is no sensory experience quite like that of being trapped in close quarters with a group of seventh grade boys who have been playing outside on a warm day. Ah, the "scent of Young England," or any other place, for that matter.]

Looking at Uncle Tom

 Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantelpiece. I've tried to reason with Aung Dehlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (a) to burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it's good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only.

"Turn it to the wall, if it hurts you, Tuppy," I said gently.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Moth-eaten bulldog

     He came listlessly into the room, and I was pained to observe that a night's rest had effected no improvement in the unhappy wreck's appearance. Indeed, I should have said, if anything, that he was looking rather more moth-eaten than when I had seen him last. If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me.

    "Stap my vitals, Tuppy, old corpse," I said, concerned, "you're looking pretty blue around the rims."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not the best approach

 No matter how much of a twitter he was in, he should have had sense enough to see that he was throwing a spanner into the works. No girl, when she has been led to expect that a man is about to pour forth his soul in a fervour or passion, like to find him suddenly shelving the whole topic in favour of an address on aquatic Salamandridae.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Go drown yourself!

     "Good morning, sir," said Jeeves. "Mr. Fink-Nottle is not feeling well." 

    Nor was I. Gussie had begun to make low, bubbling noise, and I could no longer disguise it from myself that something must have gone seriously wrong with the works. I mean, I know marriage is a pretty solemn business and the realization that he is in for it frequently churns a chap up a bit, but I had never come across a case of a newly-engaged man taking it on the chin quite so completely as this.

    Gussie looked up. His eye was dull. He clutched the thatch.

    "Goodbye, Bertie," he said, rising. I seemed to spot an error.

    "You mean 'Hullo,' don't you?"

    "No, I don't. I mean goodbye. I'm off."

    "Off where?

    "To the kitchen garden. To drown myself."

    "Don't be an ass."

    "I'm not an ass . . . Am I an ass, Jeeves?"

    "Possibly a little injudicious, sir."

    "Drowning myself, you mean?

    "Yes, sir."

    "You think, on the whole, not drown myself?"

    "I should not advocate it, sir."

    "Very well, Jeeves. I accept your ruling. After all, it would be unpleasant for Mrs. Travers to find a swollen body floating in her pond."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

 

Spare us your solutions

     "Perhaps you understand now why I want you to go and jump in that pond. I might have known that some hideous disaster would s trike this house like a thunderbolt if once you wriggled your way into it and started trying to be clever."

    Harsh words, of course, as from aunt to nephew, but I bore her no resentment. No doubt, if you looked at it from a certain angle, Bertram might be considered to have made something of a floater.

    "I am sorry."

    "What's the good of being sorry?"

    "I acted for what I deemed the best."

    "Another time try acting for the worst. Then we may possibly escape with a mere flesh wound."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

In love with Her?!

     Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature's final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him sell, and could not have felt more deeply involved in the success of his wooing if I, and not he, had been the bloke under the ether.

    The thought that by this time he might quite easily have completed the preliminary pour parlers and be deep in an informal discussion of honeymoon plans, was very pleasant to me.

    Of course, considering the sort of girl Madeline Bassett was - stars and rabbits and all that, I mean - you might say that a sober sadness would have been more fitting. But in these matters you have got to realize that tastes differ. The impulse of right-thinking men might be to run a mile when they saw the Bassett, but for some reason she appealed to the depths in Gussie, so that was that.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Not his favorite female companion

It was not until I had reached the drawing-room and was enabled to take a square look at the Bassett that I found the debonair gaiety with which I had embarked on this affair beginning to wane a trifle. Beholding her at close range like this, I suddenly became cognizant of what I was in for. The thought of strolling with this rummy specimen undeniably gave me a most unpleasant sinking feeling. I could not but remember how often, when in her company at Cannes, I had gazed dumbly at her, wishing that some kindly motorist in a racing car would ease the situation by coming along and ramming her amidships. As I have already made abundantly clear, this girl was not one of my most congenial buddies.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

How to talk to a blonde

     "Dash it, there are hundreds of things you can say. Talk about the sunset."

    "The sunset?"

    "Certainly. Half the married men you meet began by talking about the sunset."

    "But what can I say about the sunset?"

    "Well, Jeeves got off a good one the other day. I met him siring the dog in the park one evening, and he said, 'Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, sir, and all the air a solemn stillness holds.' You might use that."

    "What sort of landscape?"

    "Glimmering. G for 'gastritis,' L for 'lizard' - "

    "Oh, glimmering? Yes, that's not bad. Glimmering landscape, solemn stillness. . . . Yes, I call that pretty good."

    "You could then say that you have often thought that the stars are God's daisy chain."

    "But I haven't."

    "I dare say not. But she has. Hand her that one, and I don't see how she can help feeling that you are a twin soul."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Rubber duckie therapy

     After I had been splashing about in the porcelain for a bit, composure began to return. I have always found that in moments of heart-bowed-downness there is nothing that calms the bruised spirit like a good go at soap and water. I don't say I actually sang in the tub, but there were times when it was a mere spin of the coin whether I would do so or not.

    The spiritual anguish induced by that tactless speech had become noticeably lessened.

    The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn't played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchambr much more the old merry Bertram.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Just stifle yourself!

     "Bertie," said Aunt Dahlia, and her manner truck me as febrile, "lay of, lay off! For pity's sake, lay off. I know these plans of yours. I suppose you want to shove Angela into the lake and push young Glossop in after her to save her life, or something like that."

    "Nothing of the kind."

    "It's the sort of thing you would do."

    "My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you."

    "No thanks."

    "I say to myself - "

    "But not to me."

    "Do listen for a second."

    "I won't."

    "Right ho, then. I am dumb."

    "And have been from a child."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Why rich men are rich

     "I'll tell you, Bertie. Up till now, when these subsidies were required, I have always been able to come to Tom in the gay, confident spirit of the only child touching an indulgent father for chocolate cream. But he's just had a demand from the income tax people for an additional fifty-eight pounds, one and threepence, and all he's been talking about since I got back has been ruin and the sinister trend of socialistic legislation and what will become of us all."

    I could readily believe it. This Tom has a peculiarity I've noticed in other very oofy men. Nick him for the paltriest sum, and he lets out a squawk you can hear at Land's End. He has the stuff in gobs, but he hates giving it up.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The right connections

     "Gussie," I said, smiling paternally, "it was a lucky day for you when Bertram Wooster interested himself in your affairs. As I foresaw from the start, I can fix everything. This afternoon you shall go to Brinkley Court, as an honored guest."

    He quivered like a mousse. I suppose it must be rather a thrilling experience for the novice to watch me taking hold.

    "But Bertie, you don't mean you know these Traverses?"

    "They are my Aunt Dahlia."

    "My gosh!"

    "You see now," I pointed out, "how lucky you were to get me behind you. You go to Jeeves, and what does he do? He dresses you up in scarlet tights and one of the foulest false beards of my experience, and sends you off to fancy-dress balls. Result, agony of spirit and no progress. I then take over and put you on the right lines. Could Jeeves have got you into Brinkley Court? Not a chance. Aunt Dahlia isn't his aunt. I merely mention thee things."

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Jeeves's remedy

     I have had occasion, I fancy, to speak before now of these pick-me-ups of Jeeves's and their effect on a fellow who is hanging to life by a thread on the morning after. What they consist of, I couldn't tell you. He says some kind of sauce, the yolk of a raw egg and a dash of pepper, but nothing will convince me that the thing doesn't go much deeper than that. Be that as it may, however, the results of swallowing one are amazing.

    For perhaps the split part of a second nothing happens. It is as though all Nature waited breathlessly. Then, suddenly, it is as if the Last Trump had sounded and Judgement Day set in with unusual severity.

    Bonfires burst out in all parts of the frame. The abdomen becomes heavily charged with molten lava. A great wind seems to blow through the world, and the subject is aware of something resembling a steam hammer striking the back of the head. During this phase, the ears ring loudly, the eyeballs rotate and there is a tingling about the brow.

    And then, just as you are feeling that you ought to ring up your lawyer and see that your affairs are in order before it is too late, the whole situation seems to clarify. The wind drops. The ears cease to ring. Birds twitter. Brass bands start playing. The sun comes up over the horizon with a jerk.

    And a moment later all you are conscious of is a great peace.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Peham Wodehouse)

A food crank

 "Laura Pyke," said young Bingo with intense bitterness, "is a food crank, curse her. She says we all eat too much and eat it too quickly and, anyway, ought not to be eating it at all but living on parsnips and similar muck. And Rosie, instead of telling the woman not to be a fathead, gazes at her in wide-eyed admiration. taking it in through the pores. The result is that the cuisine of this house has been shot to pieces, and I am starving on my feet. Well, when I tell you that it's weeks since a beefsteak pudding raised its head in the home, you'll understand what I mean."

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

[I have been living with food cranks all my life, but I never knew the term to apply to them. I had always called them "health food nuts."]

Women!

     I was suffering from a considerable strain of the old nerves at the moment, of course, and, looking back, it may be that I was too harsh; but the way I felt in that dark, roosting hour was that you can say what you like, but the more a thoughtful man has to do with women, the more extraordinary it seems to him that such a sex should be allowed to clutter up the earth.

    Women, the way I looked at it, simply wouldn't do. Take the females who were mixed up in this present business. Aung Agatha, to start with, better known as the Pest of Pont Street, the human snapping-turtle. Aunt Agatha's closest friend, Miss Mapleton, of whom I can only say that one the single occasion on which I had met her she had struck me as just the sort of person who would be Aunt Agatha's closest friend. Bobbie Wickham, a girl who went about the place letting the pure in heart in for the sort of thing I was doing now. And Bobbie Wickham's cousin Clementina, who, instead of sticking sedulously to her studied and learning to be a good wife and mother, spent the springtime of her life filling inkpots with sherbet - What a crew! What a crew!

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Right in the pit of the stomach!

 I don't know if you have ever had the experience of starting off on a binge filled with a sort of glow of exhilaration, if that's the word I want, and then, without a moment's warning, having it disappear as if somebody had pressed a switch. That is what happened to me at this juncture and a most unpleasant feeling it was - rather like when you take one of those express elevators in New York at the top of the building and discover, on reaching the twenty-seventh floor, that you have carelessly left all your insides up on the thirty-second, and it's too late now to stop and fetch them back.

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Danger ahead!

 I have an idea I've told you about this Bobbie Wickham. She was the red-haired girl who let me down so disgracefully in the sinister affair of Tuppy Glossop and the hot-water bottle, that Christmas when I went to stay at Skeldings Hall, her mother's place in Hertfordshire. Her mother is Lady Wickham, who writes novels which, I believe, command a ready sale among those who like their literature pretty sloppy. A formidable old bird, rather like my Aunt Agatha in appearance. Bobbie does not resemble her, being constructed more on the lines of Clara Bow [see below]. She greeted me cordially as I entered - in fact, so cordially that I saw Jeeves pause at the door before biffing off to mix the cocktails and shoot me the sort of grave, warning look a wise old father might pass out to the effervescent son on seeing him going fairly strong with the local vamp. I nodded back, as much as to say "Chilled Steel!" and he oozed out, leaving me to play the sparkling host.

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

They didn't like the show

     A costermonger, roused, is a terrible thing. I had never seen the proletariat really stirred before, and I'm bound to say it rather awed me. I mean, it gave you some idea of what it must have been like during the French Revolution. From every corner of the hall there proceeded simultaneously the sort of noise which you hear, they tell me, at one of those East End boxing places when the referee disqualifies the popular favourite and makes the quick dash for life. And then they passed beyond mere words and began to introduce the vegetable motive.

    I don't know why, but somehow I had got it into my head that the first thing thrown at Tuppy would be a potato. One gets these fancies. It was, however, as a matter of fact, a banana, and I saw in an instant that the choice had been made by wise heads than mine. These blokes who have grown up from childhood in the knowledge of how to treat a dramatic entertainment that doesn't please them are aware by a sort of instinct just what to do for the bet, and the moment I saw that banana splash on Tuppy's shirtfront I realized how infinitely more effective and artistic it was than any potato could have been.

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

A sure thing!

     "I came here, Bertie, because it was the only thing I could do. At the last moment before she sailed to America, Rosie decided that I had better stay behind and look after the Peke. She left me a couple of hundred quid to see me through till her return. This sum, judiciously expended over the period of her absence, would have been enough to keep Peke and self in moderate affluence. But you know how it is."

    "How what is?"

    "When someone comes slinking up to you in the club and tells you that some cripple of a horse can't help winning even if it develops lumbago and the botts ten yards from the starting post. I tell you, I regarded the thing as a cautious and conservative investment."

    "You mean you planked the entire capital on a horse?" 

    Bingo laughed bitterly. "If you could call the thing a horse. If it hadn't shown a flash of speed in the straight, it would have got mixed up with the next race. It came in last, putting me in a dashed delicate position."

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Taking a few days off from blogging

 Soon to return.

Because I said so!

     "Don't speak in that casual way, as if you supposed that it was perfectly natural that you would make a good impression upon him. Mr. Filmer is a serious-minded man of high character and purpose, and you are just the type vapid and frivolous wastrel against which he is most likely to be prejudiced.

    Hard words, of course, from one's own flesh and blood, but well in keeping with past form.

    "You will endeavour, therefore, while you are here not to display yourself in the role of a vapid and frivolous wastrel. In the first place, you will give up smoking during your visit."

    "Oh, I say!"

    "Mr. Filmer is president of the Anti-Tobacco League. Nor will you drink alcoholic stimulants."

    "Oh, dash it!"

    "And you will kindly exclude from your conversation all that is suggestive of the bar, the billiards-room, and the stage-door. Mr. Filmer will judge you largely by your conversation." I rose to a point of order.

    "Yes, but why have I got to make an impression on this - on Mr. Filmer?"

    "Because," said the old relative, giving me the eye, "I particularly wish it."

    Not, perhaps, a notably snappy come-back as come-backs go; but it was enough to show me that that was more or less that; and I beetled out with an aching heart.

(from Very Good, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)