The Inimitable Jeeves (Jeeves and Wooster Book 2)

by P.G. Wodehouse

‘It is young men like you, Bertie, who make the person with the future of the race at heart despair. Cursed with too much money, you fritter away in idle selfishness a life which might have been made useful, helpful and profitable. You do nothing but waste your time on frivolous pleasures. You are simply an antisocial animal, a drone. Bertie, it is imperative that you marry.’

I wouldn’t have said off-hand that there was anything particularly fascinating about me—in fact, most people look on me as rather an ass;

If there’s one thing I like, it’s a quiet life. I’m not one of those fellows who get all restless and depressed if things aren’t happening to them all the time. You can’t make it too placid for me. Give me regular meals, a good show with decent music every now and then, and one or two pals to totter round with, and I ask no more.

We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do—some things—appointments, and people’s birthdays, and letters to post, and all that—but not an absolute bally insult like the above.

For until I have had my early cup of tea and have brooded on life for a bit absolutely undisturbed, I’m not much of a lad for the merry chit-chat.

‘What beats me,’ I said, following up a train of thought, ‘is what principle you pick them on. The girls you fall in love with, I mean. I mean to say, what’s your system? As far as I can see, no two of them are alike.

You know, with the most charitable feelings towards him, there are moments when you can’t help thinking that young Bingo ought to be in some sort of a home.