We had a hard year last year, with the locust swarms and all that.

O the tyranny of aristocracy!—give it a furlong, and it will take a mile,—a veto stopped me once from going to Brussels: and now comes a Lettre de cachet ordering me to Paris. (With furlong being probable wordplay on the usual form.)

There are various ways of dealing with the fact that you are suddenly surrounded by creature who can see and would like to eat you, but one way, a molluscan specialty, is to grow a hard shell and live within or beneath it.

And then, mirabile dictu, between the piers, leaping from wave to wave as it rushed at headlong speed, swept the strange schooner before the blast, with all sail set, and gained the safety of the harbour.