From ‘Meet Mr. Mulliner’
……..and his evenings in doing crossword puzzles. By the time, he was thirty he knew more about Eli, the prophet Ra, the Sun God and the bird Emu than anybody else in the country except Susan Blake, the vicar’s daughter who had also taken up the solving of crossword puzzles and was the first girl in Worcestershire to find out the meaning of ‘stearine’ and ‘crepuscular’……. (p.10)
Susan was just as constant a caller at George’s cosy little cottage, being frequently stumped as girls will be, by words of eight letters signifying ‘largely used in the manufacture of poppet valves. (p.11)
He was a kindly man with moth eaten whiskers and an eye like a meditative codfish (p.11)
………..he sounds like a soda-water siphon trying to recite Gunga Din (p.12)
George had never before traveled under the seat of a railway carriage and though he belonged to the younger generation, which is supposed to be avid of new experiences, he had no desire to do so now (p.17)
Little as he knew of women, he was aware that as a sex they are apt to be startled by the sight of men crawling out from under the seats of compartments (p.17-18)
Her eyes were now about the size of regulation standard golf-balls and her breathing suggested the last stages of asthma (p.19)
It is a curious thing that inspite of the railway company’s sporting willingness to let their patrons have a tug at the extremely moderate price of five pounds a go, very few people have ever either pulled a cord or seen it pulled. There is thus, a widespread ignorance as to what precisely happens on such occasions (p.20-21)
‘Sir Jasper Finch-Ferrowmere?’ said Wilfred.
‘ffinch ffarrowmere,’ corrected the visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capital letters (p. 29)
Externally, ffinch Hall was one of those gloomy, somber country houses which seem to exist only for the purpose of having horrid crimes committed in them (p.32).
It was the sort of house where ravens croak in the front garden just before the death of the heir and shrieks ring out from behind barred windows in the night (p.32)
The brain which had electrified the world of science by discovering that if you mixed a stiffish Oxygen and Potassium and added a splash of trinitrotoluol and a spot of old brandy you got something that could be sold in America as champagne at $150, the case had to confess itself baffled (p.33)
……and the general demeanour of a saintly but timid cod-fish (p.41)
Go back to your kitchen, woman; select another; and remember this time that you are a cook, not an incinerating machine. Between an egg that is fried and an egg that is cremated there is a wide and substantial difference (p.46)
Beastly laugh he’d got. Like glue pouring out of a jug (p.66)
Statistics show that the two classes of the community which least often marry are milkmen and fashionable photographers – milkmen because they see women too easily in the morning and fashionable photographers because their days are spent in an atmosphere of feminine loveliness so monotonous that they become surfeited and morose (p.130)
‘I tipped my cabman at
‘I can hardly believe it’
‘Nor could I, when I found out. I thought it was 3 pence….’ (p.145)
…………making a noise like a bassoon into its interior (p.170)
From ‘Uneasy Money’
……..made a noise when he drank soup like water running out of a bathtub (p.13)
‘You said you met him in
‘Well, yes that’s true. He was walking up the Haymarket and I was walking down. I caught his eye and he nodded and passed on. I don’t see how I could construe that as an invitation to go and sit on his lap and help myself out of his pockets’ (p.14)
Miss Daisy Leonard was still demure, but as she had just slipped a piece of ice down the back of Nutty’s neck one may assume that she was feeling at her ease and had overcome any diffidence or shyness which might have interfered with her complete enjoyment of the festivities. (p.50)
Was it, he asked himself, altogether her fault that she was so massive and spoke as if she were addressing an open-air meeting in a strong gale? (p.50-51)
Hanging over the top of the gate like a wet sock (p.91)
From ‘Bachelors Anonymous’
The two were friends of long standing. Mr.Trout had handled all of Mr.Llewellyn’s five divorces, including his latest from Grayce, widow of Orlando Mulligan, the Western star and this formed a bond. There is nothing like a good divorce for breaking down the barriers between lawyer and client. It gives them something to talk about.
He was a man, who except when marrying, thought things over. (p.5)
……seedier part of
………….merely standing there, making a noise like the death rattle of an expiring soda siphon (p.107)
From ‘
The partiality of drowning men for straws is proverbial; but as a class, they are broad-minded and well clutch at punt-poles with equal readiness (p.118)
“On rising,” he told Wilmot, “take the juice of an orange. For luncheon, the juice of an orange. And for dinner the juice….” He paused for a moment before springing the big surprise – “of an orange. For the rest, I am not an advocate of nourishment between meals, but I am inclined to think that , should you become faint during the day – or possibly the night – there will be no harm in your taking….well, yes, I really see no reason why you should not take the juice of - let us say – an orange” (p.166)
Why is there unrest in
And here this lion has got him down and is starting to chew the face off him. He gazes into its hideous eyes and he hears its fearful snarls and he knows the end is near. And where I think you’re wrong, Levitsky is in saying that that’s the spot for our big cabaret sequence. What I say is what we need here is for the
From ‘The Clicking of Cuthbert and Other Stories’
In the second chapter, I allude to Stout Cortes staring at the Pacific. I received an anonymous letter containing the words “You big stiff, it wasn’t Cortes, it was Balboa.” This I believe is historically accurate. On the other hand, if Cortes was good enough for Keats, he is good enough for me. Besides, even if it was Balboa, the Pacific was open for being stared at about that time and I see no reason why Cortes should not have had a look at it as well. (p.10)
Mortimer finished his dinner in a trance, which is the best way to do it at some hotels (p.66)
…..said Mr.Devine, ‘I have been greatly influenced by Sovietski’
“Sovietski no good!” (it was Vladimir Brusiloff)
He paused for a moment, set the machinery working again and delivered five more at the pithead
‘I spit me of Sovietski!’
Until this moment Raymond Parsloe Devine’s stock had stood at something considerably over par in Wood Hills intellectual circles, but now there was a rapid slump. Hitherto he had been greatly admired for being influenced by Sovietski, but it appeared now that this was not the good thing to be. It was evidently a rotten thing to be. And Cuthbert Banks, doing his popular imitation of a sardine in a corner, felt for the first time that life held something of sunshine.
Raymond Parsloe Devine was plainly shaken but he made an adroit attempt to recover his lost prestige.
‘When I say I have been influenced by Sovietski, I mean, of course, that I was once under his spell. I now belong wholeheartedly to the
There was a reaction. People nodded at one another sympathetically. After all, we cannot expect old heads on young shoulders and a lapse at the outset of one’s career should not be held against one who has eventually seen the light.
‘Nastikoff no good,’ said Vladimir Brusiloff coldly. ‘Nastikoff worse than Sovietski. I spit me of Nastikoff!’
This time there was no doubt about it. The bottom had dropped out of the market and Raymond Parsloe Devine Preferred were down in the cellar with no takers. It was clear to the entire assembled company that they had been all wrong about Raymond Parsloe Devine. They had taken him at his own valuation and had been cheated into admiring him as a man who amounted to something and all the while he had belonged to the
From ‘Summer Lightning’
Most of the photographs in the weekly paper were of peeresses trying to look like chorus girls and chorus girls trying to look like peeresses (p.14)
‘Hugo?’ ‘Millicent?’ ‘Is that you?’ ‘Yes. Is that you?’ ‘Yes.’ Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them (p.223)
From ‘Right Ho! Jeeves’
Nobody could love a freak like Gussie except a similar freak like the Basset……….Just the fellow to tell you what to do till the doctor came, if you had a sick newt on your hands (p.155-156)
From ‘Nothing Serious’
“Miss Flack?” “Hello?”
“Sorry to disturb you at this hour, but will you marry me?”
“Certainly. Who is that?”
“Smallwood Bessemer”
“I don’t get the second name.”
“Bessemer. B for banana. E for erysipelas”
“Oh; Mr.Bessemer? Yes delighted. Good Night Mr.Bessemer.”
“Good Night; Miss Flack.” (p.168-169)
From ‘The Inimitable Jeeves’
……..when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps (p.157)
From ‘Ice in the Bedroom’
I was the one who was feeling faint when the waiter brought the bad news. I thought for a moment he must have added in the date (p.88)
From ‘The Mating Season’
My Aunt Agatha, the one who chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth (p.5)
‘Tell me, Bertie, have you ever stolen a cub from a tigress?’
I said no, for one reason and another I never had……..(p.121)
King’s Deverill was one of those villages where picturesque cottages breed like rabiits (p.175)
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