An enjoyable visit to the city

     "Only too glad to have been able to render you this little service, Mr. Roddis," said Lord Ickenham. 
"Well, I must be moving. I have an appointment. Pleasant after the rain, is it not? Come, Percy."

    He lugged Pongo off.

    "So that," he said, with satisfaction, "is that. On these visits of mine to the metropolis, my boy, I always make it my aim, if possible, to spread sweetness and light. I look about me, even in a foul hole like Mitching Hill, and I ask myself - How can I leave this foul hole a better and happier foul hole than I found it? And if I see a chance, I grab it. Here is our omnibus. Spring aboard, my boy, and on our way home we will be sketching out rough plans for the evening. If the old Leicester Grill is still in existence, we might look in there. It must be fully thirty-five years since I was last thrown out of the Leicester Grill. I wonder who is the bouncer there now."

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

A discussion about woolly mufflers

 "This morning, as I was leaving home, I had a rather painful disagreement with your aunt. She said the weather was treacherous and wished me to take my woolly muffler. I replied that the weather was not treacherous and that I would be dashed if I took my woolly muffler. Eventually, by the exercise of an iron will, I had my way, and I ask you, my dear boy, to envisage what will happen if I return with a cold in the head. I shall sink to the level of a fifth-class power. Next time I came to London, it would be with a liver pad and a respirator."

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

How to judge a baby contest

 He kept his head, however. This was the first time he had ever been let in for anything of this nature, but a sort of instinct told him to adopt the policy followed by all experienced judges at these affairs - viz. to ignore the babies absolutely and concentrate entirely on the mothers. So many points for ferocity of demeanour, that is to say, and so many for possibility of knife concealed in stocking, and so on and so forth. You ask any curate how he works the gaff at the annual Baby Competition in his village, and he will tell you that these, broadly, are the lines on which he goes.

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

Perpetually in love

 I suppose, all in all, Freddie Widgeon has been in love at first sight with possibly twenty-seven girls in the course of his career: but hitherto everything had been what you might call plain sailing. I mean, he would flutter round for a few days and then the girl, incensed by some floater on his part or possibly merely unable to stand the sight of him any longer, would throw him out on his left ear, and that would be that. Everything pleasant and agreeable and orderly, as you might say. But this was different. Here he had come up against a new element, the jealous rival, and it was beginning to look not so good.

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

No one likes the honorable Galahad

     There came the sound of wheels grinding to a standstill on the gravel outside the front door.

    "Clarence," said Gally.

    "And Mr. Landseer."

    "Don't say 'And Mr. Landseer' in that soupy tone of voice, said Gally sternly. "He hasn't come to steal the spoons."

    "If he is a friend of yours, I should imagine that he is quite capable of doing so. Is he wanted by the police?"

    "How I sympathize with the police," said Lady Hermione. "I know just how they feel."

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Painting of a pickled porker

 Freddie, hastening to the bed and gazing down at the canvas which lay upon it, had started back like one who sees some dreadful sight. He was now replacing his monocle in his eye, preparatory to trying again, and Bill looked at him dully.

"You notice something wrong, too?"

"Wrong? My dear old bird!"

"Don't forget it's not finished."

Freddie shook his head. "It's no good taking that line, Blister. Thank heaven it isn't. One wouldn't want a thing like that to spread any further. What on earth made you depict this porker as tight?"

"Tight?"

"The pig I see here is a pig that has obviously been on the toot of a lifetime for days on end. Those glassy eyes. That weak smile. I've seen old Tippy look just like that."

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Like a merry-go-round

     Many lovers in his position might have consoled themselves with the reflection that Freddie, being now a married man, was presumably out of the race for Veronica Wedge's hand and heart. But Tipton had had the wrong sort of upbringing to permit of his drawing comfort from any thought like that. The son of parents who after marrying each other had almost immediately started marrying other people with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, his had been one of those childhoods where the faintly bewildered offspring finds himself passed from hand to hand like a medicine ball. And, grown to riper years, he had seen among his friends and acquaintance far too much of that Ex-Wife's Heart Balm Society Love Tangle stuff to be a believer in the durability of the married state.

    That very Doris Jimpson, of whom he had once supposed himself enamoured, had become Doris Boole, Doris Busbridge, and Doris Applejohn in such rapid succession that the quickness of the hand almost deceived the eye.

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

The definition of "hoity-toity"

 It is the boast of Barribault's Hotel, which caters principally to American millionaires and visiting maharajahs, that it can make the wrong sort of client feel more like a piece of cheese - and a cheap yellow piece of cheese at that - than any other similar establishment in the world. The personnel of its staff are selected primarily for their ability to curl the upper lip and raise the eyebrows just that extra quarter of an inch which makes all the difference.

(from Full Moon, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

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)