Showing posts with label Psmith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psmith. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Psmith Journalist by P. G. Wodehouse (Penguin 1915)



It was not Psmith's habit, when he felt deeply on any subject, to exhibit his feelings; and this matter of the tenements had hit him harder than any one who did not know him intimately would have imagined. Mike would have understood him, but Billy Windsor was too recent an acquaintance. Psmith was one of those people who are content to accept most of the happenings of life in an airy spirit of tolerance. Life had been more or less of a game with him up till now. In his previous encounters with those with whom fate had brought him in contact there had been little at stake. The prize of victory had been merely a comfortable feeling of having had the best of a battle of wits; the penalty of defeat nothing worse than the discomfort of having failed to score. But this tenement business was different. Here he had touched the realities. There was something worth fighting for. His lot had been cast in pleasant places, and the sight of actual raw misery had come home to him with an added force from that circumstance. He was fully aware of the risks that he must run. The words of the man at the Astor, and still more the episodes of the family friend from Missouri and the taximeter cab, had shown him that this thing was on a different plane from anything that had happened to him before. It was a fight without the gloves, and to a finish at that. But he meant to see it through. Somehow or other those tenement houses had got to be cleaned up. If it meant trouble, as it undoubtedly did, that trouble would have to be faced.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Leave It to Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse (Vintage Books 1923)



Eve's eyes opened wide.

'Do you mean to say you gave me somebody else's umbrella?

'I had unfortunately omitted to bring my own out with me this morning.'

'I've never heard of such a thing!'

Merely practical Socialism. Other people are content to talk about the Redistribution of Property. I go out and do it.