[W]e should really look upon this author's [Samuel Jackson Pratt's] departure from the world of literature as a good riddance of bad rubbish; …]

Just a little more than 100,000 years ago, there were sloths as long as a giraffe is tall, monstrous bears whose shoulders were six feet off the ground, and Bunyanesque beavers that weighed as much as an NFL linebacker.

an angelic child

It is even masqued by that sort of good-humoured air that at heart he resents his impressment.