Piccadilly Jim quotes

Architects, confronted with it, reel and throw up their hands defensively, and even the lay observer has a sense of shock.

The place resembles in almost equal proportions a cathedral, a suburban villa, a hotel and a Chinese pagoda.

Many of its windows are of stained glass, and above the porch stand two terra-cotta lions, considerably more repulsive even than the complacent animals which guard New York’s Public Library. It is a house which is impossible to overlook:

Many of its windows are of stained glass, and above the porch stand two terra-cotta lions, considerably more repulsive even than the complacent animals which guard New York’s Public Library.

It is a house which is impossible to overlook: and it was probably for this reason that Mrs. Pett insisted on her husband buying it, for she was a woman who liked to be noticed.

Through the rich interior of this mansion Mr. Pett, its nominal proprietor, was wandering like a lost spirit. The hour was about ten of a fine Sunday morning, but the Sabbath calm which was upon the house had not communicated itself to him.

Mr. Pett retired, fermenting. He wondered how another man would have handled this situation.

The ridiculous inconsistency of the human character infuriated him.

Why should he be a totally different man on Riverside Drive from the person he was in Pine Street?

From behind this door, as from behind those below, sounds proceeded, but this time they did not seem to discourage Mr. Pett. It was the tapping of a typewriter that he heard, and he listened to it with an air of benevolent approval.

He loved to hear the sound of a typewriter: it made home so like the office.

“Come in,” called a girl’s voice.

When it smiled, a row of white teeth flashed out: or, if the lips did not part, a dimple appeared on the right cheek, giving the whole face an air of mischievous geniality.

It was an enterprising, swashbuckling sort of mouth, the mouth of one who would lead forlorn hopes with a jest or plot whimsically lawless conspiracies against convention.

In its corners and in the firm line of the chin beneath it there lurked, too, more than a hint of imperiousness. A physiognomist would have gathered, correctly, that Ann Chester liked having her own way and was accustomed to get it.

“What about the library? Isn’t that sacred to you?”

“Wallowing in my best chair,” said Mr. Pett morosely.

“Smoking cigarettes.”

Pett justice. Seen life-size, she was both handsomer and more formidable than she appeared in reproduction. She was a large woman, with a fine figure and bold and compelling eyes, and her personality crashed disturbingly into the quiet atmosphere of the room.

She was the type of woman whom small, diffident men seem to marry instinctively, as unable to help themselves as cockleshell boats sucked into a maelstrom.

“What are you going to do about it?” she demanded, sinking heavily into the chair which her husband had vacated.

But the sorrows of the baseball bug, compelled by fate to live three thousand miles away from the Polo Grounds, have been neglected in song. Bingley Crocker was such a one, and in Summer his agonies were awful.

He pined away in a country where they said “Well played, sir!” when they meant “attaboy!”

“Bayliss, do you play cricket?”

“I suppose you’ve never seen a ballgame?”

“Then, Bill,” said Mr. Crocker, reverting in his emotion to the bad habit of his early London days, “you haven’t lived. See here!”

Whatever vestige of respect for class distinctions Mr. Crocker had managed to preserve during the opening stages of the interview now definitely disappeared. His eyes shone wildly and he snorted like a warhorse.

Third batter up. See him rub his hands in the dirt. Watch this kid. He’s good! He lets two alone, then slams the next right on the nose. Whizzes around to second. First guy, the one we left on second, comes home for one run.

That’s a game! Take it from me, Bill, that’s a game!

”

An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain. Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again; The birds singing gaily, that came at my call, Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.

Mr. Crocker had never lived in a thatched cottage, nor had his relations with the birds of his native land ever reached the stage of intimacy indicated by the poet

; but substitute “Lambs Club” for the former and “members” for the latter, and the parallel becomes complete.

In spite of his misery, a wan smile appeared on Mr. Pett’s death-mask at this remark.

Mr. Pett died again, greatly respected.

“Why should the New York papers refer to James at all?” said Mrs. Crocker.

At the moment an unbecoming pallor marred his face, and beneath his eyes were marks that suggested that he had slept little and ill. He stood at the foot of the stairs, yawning cavernously.

“Bayliss,” he said, “have you been painting yourself yellow?”

“Strange! Your face looks a bright gamboge to me, and your outlines wobble. Bayliss, never mix your drinks. I say this to you as a friend. Is there anyone in the morning-room?”

“Strange! Your face looks a bright gamboge to me, and your outlines wobble.

Bayliss, never mix your drinks. I say this to you as a friend.

Is there anyone in the morning-room?”

The sun was now shining strongly through the windows of the morning-room. Bayliss lowered the shades. Jimmy Crocker sank onto the sofa, and closed his eyes.

“A conviction is stealing over me that I am about to expire.”

“Shall I bring you a little breakfast, Mr. James?”

Just so, faintly at first and taking shape by degrees, must the germ of civic spirit have come to Prehistoric Man.

We are all individualists till we wake up.

The thought of having done anything to make his father unhappy was bitter to Jimmy Crocker. They had always been more like brothers than father and son. Hard thoughts about himself surged through Jimmy’s mind.

Prudence came at the eleventh hour to check Jimmy. This was not a matter, he perceived, to be decided recklessly, on the spur of a sudden impulse. Above all, it was not a matter to be decided before lunch.

An empty stomach breeds imagination.

He had ascertained that he could sail on the Atlantic if he wished to. The sensible thing to do now was to go and lunch and see how he felt about it after that.

“

Jimmy Crocker is a worm!

”

“Jimmy Crocker is a worm!”

Jimmy spilled his cocktail. It might have been the voice of Conscience.

“I despise him more than anyone on earth. I hate to think that he’s an American.”

Jimmy drank the few drops that remained in his glass, partly to make sure of them, partly as a restorative.

It is an unnerving thing to be despised by a red-haired girl whose life you have just saved.

To Jimmy it was not only unnerving; it was uncanny. This girl had not known him when they met on the street a few moments before.

A British butler is not easily robbed of his poise, but Bayliss was frankly unequal to the sudden demand on his presence of mind. He lowered his jaw an inch or two, but spoke no word.

“Dad’s a little upset at my going,” whispered Jimmy confidentially. “He’s not quite himself.”

Ann was a girl possessed not only of ready tact but of a kind heart. She had summed up Mr. Bayliss at a glance. Every line of him proclaimed him a respectable upper servant.

Still, taking these drawbacks into consideration, the chance was far too good to miss. Such an opening might never happen again. He waited till the ship had steadied herself after an apparently suicidal dive into an enormous roller, then, staggering back to her side, spoke.

“Love is the biggest thing in life!” he roared.

He wished a moment later that he had postponed this statement of faith, for their next steps took them into a haven of comparative calm, where some dimly seen portion of the vessel’s anatomy jutted out and formed a kind of nook where it was …

Ann was quite certain now that she did not like this young man nearly as well as she had supposed.

It is trying for a strong-minded, clear-thinking girl to have her philosophy described as a grouch.

“Because I’ve had the courage to think about it for myself, and not let myself be blinded by popular superstition. The whole world has united in making itself imagine that there is something called love which is the most wonderful happening in life.

But I suspect that to be a successful Asparagus Adjuster requires capital. We now come to Awning Crank and Spring Rollers. I don’t think I should like that.

Rolling awning cranks seems to me a sorry way of spending life’s springtime.

Let’s try the B.’s.”

Chester looked at his daughter with interest. Her growing-up and becoming a beauty had always been a perplexity to him. He could never rid himself of the impression of her as a long-legged child in short skirts. “I suppose you’re refusing them all the time?”

“Every day from ten to four, with an hour off for lunch. I keep regular office hours. Admission on presentation of visiting card.”

“And how do you feel about this Lord Wisbeach?”

“Ogden!” she shrilled; and passed up the stairs two at a time, gathering speed as she went.

A boy’s best friend is his mother.

Ogden’s revelation added fuel to his aversion. For a moment he toyed with the fascinating thought of relieving his feelings by spanking the boy, but restrained himself reluctantly at the thought of the inevitable ruin which would ensue.

He had been an inmate of the house long enough to know, with a completeness which would have embarrassed that gentleman, what a cipher Mr. Pett was in the home

and how little his championship would avail in the event of a clash with Mrs. Pett.

The window, which the thoughtful architect had designed at least three sizes too large for the room and which admitted the evening air in pleasing profusion, looked out onto a series of forlorn backyards.

In boardinghouses, it is only the windows of the rich and haughty that face the street.

On the bed, a corncob pipe between his teeth, lay Jimmy Crocker. He was shoeless and in his shirtsleeves. There was a crumpled evening paper on the floor beside the bed. He seemed to be taking his rest after the labours of a trying day.

“What’s the matter, Jerry? You seem perturbed.

You have the aspect of one whom Fate has smitten in the spiritual solar plexus, or of one who has been searching for the leak in Life’s gaspipe with a lighted candle.

What’s wrong?”

The detective glanced keenly at him as he passed.

He made a practice of glancing keenly at nearly everything. It cost nothing and impressed clients.

“I am so glad you have come, Mr. Sturgis,” said Mrs. Pett. “Won’t you sit down?”

“You—ah—appear to dislike the rich,” said Mrs. Pett, as nearly in her grand manner as she could contrive.

Miss Trimble bowled over the grand manner as if it had been a small fowl and she an automobile.

She rolled over it and squashed it flat.

A detective who hurls speech at you through clenched teeth and yet detects is better value for the money than one who, though an ideal companion for the drawing-room, is incompetent: and

Mrs. Pett, like most other people, subconsciously held the view that the ruder a person is the more efficient he must be.

It is but rarely that anyone is found who is not dazzled by the glamour of incivility.

and Mrs. Pett, like most other people, subconsciously held the view that the ruder a person is the more efficient he must be.

It is but rarely that anyone is found who is not dazzled by the glamour of incivility.

She crushed down her resentment at her visitor’s tone, and tried to concentrate her mind on the fact that this was a business matter and that what she wanted was results rather than fair words.

“You bet it is,” said Ogden. “

My middle name is business.

Say, are you working this on your own, or are you in with Buck Maginnis and his crowd?”

I guess you haven’t been in the house long enough to have noticed, but she’s very like Eugenia in some ways. She’s the boss all right, and old Pett does just what he’s told to. I guess it’s the same with me, Jim.

There’s a certain type of man that’s just born to have it put over on him by a certain type of woman.

I’m that sort of man and your stepmother’s that sort of woman. No, I guess I’m going to get mine all right, and the only thing to do is to keep it from stopping me having a good time now.”

Plot is only as strong as its weakest link.

The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang agley if one of the mice is a mental defective or if one of the men is a Jerry Mitchell. …

They left the room cautiously. Mr. Crocker for a moment had a sense of something missing. He had reached the stairs before he realised what it was.

Then it dawned upon him that what was lacking was the applause. The scene had deserved a round.

Jimmy, vigilant in the gallery, heard the library door open softly and, peering over the rail, perceived two dim forms in the darkness. One was large, the other small. They crossed the room together.