Sublime

he will then settle down to the discussion with his partner about the table-napkins, each speaker indulging in long monologues in turn; a peculiarity of much American conversation. Now if in the middle of one of these monologues, he suddenly thinks that the vacant space of the waiter's shirt-front might also be utilised to advertise the Gee Whiz Gi

Introduced to a party of people who ignore their own chauffeur, he protests: “I have not met this gentleman

But that needn’t concern us. We were permanent. And, furthermore, we had dogs. This was good, and it would be taken into account when he assessed the premium. Were they vicious? If not, perhaps they could be trained. He knew a man who could turn poodles into lethal weapons.

One, at least, of the essentials of it is smallness, smallness in preference to largeness, smallness for smallness’ sake. The merry-maker wants a pleasant parlour, he would not give twopence for a pleasant continent.

“The best I can wish you, my child,” so said the Fairy Blackstick in Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring, “is a little misfortune.”

Pickwickian

The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

He realizes, what Peter Pan could not be made to realize, that a plain human house of one’s own, standing in one’s own backyard, is really quite as romantic as a rather cloudy house at the top of a tree or a highly conspiratorial house underneath the roots of it.