unearths some literary gems.
[Note: This book involved so much plot development about financial turbulence and machinations within the early 1920s British import-export hosiery industry that I was almost craving a cricket match.]
***
It seems a little obvious, perhaps, to say that nothing marks the passage of time so much as one's birthdays, since it was precisely for this purpose that birthdays were first invented.
***
[This somehow ties in with pre-blogging the future and all that, as I see it. The protagonist entertains his young niece by spinning yarns of things that supposedly happened that day, until it's her bedtime.]
"That's all that happened to-day," said Bill firmly....
"But more happened another day?" suggested Sylvia.
"Oh, yes. Lots more. Only it hasn't happened yet, you see."
***
[Piling on the participles!]
What on earth, he asked himself...had he been and gone and done now?
***
Is there anything, one wonders, like the human nose for playing these tricks with one's memory. An all-but-forgotten tune can do a good deal, it is true; but for the sheer illusion which can set time at defiance, commend me to the all-but-forgotten smell.
***
"I'm quite serious," she said.
"So am I," answered Bill.
And in proof of this, they both laughed.
***
So far as it went, the interview was a satisfactory one. That is to say that neither the manager nor his assistant...laughed loudly or gave other signs of visible contempt at the idea of Messrs. Fraser and Company coming to them for a loan.
***
One of Mr. Stromberg's mannerisms...was to fill up any of the pauses which marked his search for a missing word with a kind of buzzing sound.* By this simple means he was able at the same time to prevent anyone else from breaking in on him.**
[*Coincidentally, a character in Burke's Law "Who Killed Hamlet" does something similar.]
[**Would we call this a "ploy"?]
***
The butler executed a brief fantasia on the electric switches by the door, the general effect of which was to leave the lighting pretty much as it was.
***
He sped past them both and resumed his place at the sofa, rather as though he were trying to create the illusion that he had never really left the room.
***
Couldn't we leave it to other people to wallow in italicised sentiment?
[N.B. This is the narrator speaking to the reader.]
***
George pointed out that once a Frenchwoman becomes a widow...she is practically immortal....Mme Lemaitre may have been more of a potential than an actual widow; but this is the important fact: she dressed like one.
***
Heaven knows that you and I aren't the kind of people to set ourselves up as experts on sentiment.
[Narrator to reader, again.]
***
[Sometimes one word takes a sentence from amusing to hilarious.]
"I won a prize at the tennis tournament." She illustrated this triumph by a vigorous movement with her arm, narrowly escaping hitting a passer-by in the beard [my emphasis].
***
"A Swiss half-franc for your thoughts." [I wonder how that would come out if run through the 1922 exchange rate against the British penny.]
***
There were super-dressing-cases, super-umbrellas, super-clocks, super-photograph-frames and super-articles to which it was impossible to give any name. The shop itself had clearly abandoned the attempt, and had ticketed them as "The Season's Novelties."
***
"Perhaps he'll be able to see further into this brick wall than I can."
***
[Three longer snippets attached.]
[Bonus: Section III (of seven sections total) is entitled, "A Few Telegrams." It makes me think of Mackail's buddy Wodehouse, of course; but Bill the Bachelor dates from 1922, i.e., roughly a decade prior to those telegram-heavy Jeeves and Bertie novels--though of course PGW may have used flurry-of-telegram business earlier elsewhere.]
