Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The New Yorker, Feb.-June 1925:

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Lone prospectors in the mountains of review copies need divining rods, guaranteed to wriggle over merit.

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Artemus J. Teeter, Harvard '09 A.B., Columbia 11 A.M., Daylight Saving Time

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[From a "before" testimonial in a subscription ad.]
"I was empyrean, didactic, and eleemosynary."
[And the subscription card includes self-diagnoses for such items as...]
Ectoplasms
Xylophone Addiction
Zanyism
& So Forth

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a jollifier [master of ceremonies]

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[Chaplin is] a three-ring Intelligentsia all by himself. [Ben Hecht]
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Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Smart Set, ca. 1905:

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"All magic lies close to everyday affairs."

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the Every Other Saturday Club

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a solemn ass who wrote essays on the relation of something or other to something else
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Re. the attachments:
You will, of course, note the one-upping (-downing?) in the first snippet from Ethel Sigsbee Small(!). In case it's not obvious, by the way, the protagonists in the work by Small are--well--small, i.e., stage-struck children.
"The Importance of Being Somebody" actually has the prosaic meaning of "don't be a nobody." Naturally, I prefer to read it as a genericization of "E(a)rnest."

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Smart Set, 1902-1904(?)

[I neglected to keep meticulous track of the 1904 vs. 1905 cusp as I wrapped up this batch, hence the uncertainty in the subject line.]

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"Aren't they dears, Mr. Popover?"

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She was one of that kind...that is just bound to graduate with honors clinging to her degree as thick as barnacles.

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His countenance betrayed impenetrable solemnity, if that can be called betrayal.
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[Additional snippets attached. "The Inside Story of It" refers, prosaically, to the "inside story" of some boring contretemps--i.e., you've heard about the affair, now here's the inside story of it. But when I first encountered the title, I naturally read it with implied italics on "It"--i.e., here, at last, is the inside story of It, for everyone who's always wanted to know about It!]

[Bonus character name: Hector Brisbane Snale]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Smart Set, February 1910:

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Two plays and one critic formed the eternal theatrical triangle. [Nathan--referring to a typical evening during a busy opening season for plays]

Divorce originally created a sensation in Europe...In New York it created only a sensation of ennui. [Nathan]

[Two more Nathan snippets attached.]

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"a critic who has thought things out for himself, to five places of decimals" [Mencken]
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[Bonus attachment: a silly mock classified ad]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From "Nuggles," by Aquila Kempster:

"Rodney W. Martin, parted in the middle with a 'William.'"

[Three more snippets attached. The premise is that the protagonist is trying to locate a woman whom he's seen only in a photo, in which she's identified herself only by the presumed pet name of Nuggles. When they ultimately meet, and he's embarrassed to have blurted out "Nuggles" in his surprise and joy, he explains it away by the ploy of saying it's a positive expletive, originating with the Greek. She, for her part, doesn't recognize the word ("What was it--Guggles?"); and it also turns out she's read the novel he's recently written in which he's called the heroine Nuggles in her honor...and so he has to double down on the word's provenance. Ha! And it Just Goes to Show: The only reason I bothered with this story, as I glanced through the Smart Set table of contents, was a faint hope that a story called "Nuggles" would pay off. I was prepared for some tedious disappointment like a sea yarn or a dog story--but hooray!]

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The American Mercury, 1925:

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Genieveve Tobin is the Barry heroine whose faith in the idiot-hero provides the love disinterest. [Nathan]

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There is no such thing as romance--it is only the expectation of itself. [Max Eastman]

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[Jolson] so far out-distances his rivals that they seem like the wrong ends of so many opera-glasses. [Nathan]

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The telephone is relied on to get at least a third of the plot over the footlights....There are also more "Gods!" in the play than in a five-foot shelf of mythology. [Nathan]
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Bonuses:

"nowanights" (i.e., a "nowadays" equivalent for night-time activities, courtesy of Carl Van Vechten)

an act-closing curtain "which descends upon a man's announcing in all seriousness that he is going to Palm Beach and that he plans to remain there until the end of the first week in June"--a device I unwittingly echoed in my childhood play for Zoom!

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Smart Set, January 1910:

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[Grave wiseacres! This phrase is employed by an author named Alice Hathaway Cunningham.]
"grave wiseacres who maintained an air of mystery and said there were always two sides to every story"

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Antony and Cleopatra with the art sauce [from "Drama's Trial Marriage with Art," by George Jean Nathan]

Cleopatra was not the only one who had been stung. [ditto]

The Belle of Brittany is one of the best musical plays that ever came out of the test tubes in the English collaboratory. [ditto]

[Four more Nathan snippets attached.]

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It has all of the shortcomings and few of the merits of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. [Mencken]
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[Two miscellaneous snippets also attached.]