[…]only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.

[…] three scruffy-looking young men with intermittent facial hair and starvation-symptom physiques.

A doorknob of whatever roundish shape is effectively a continuum of levers, with the axis of the latching mechanism—known as the spindle—being the fulcrum about which the turning takes place. Applying a force tangential to the knob is essentially equivalent to applying one perpendicular to a radial line defining the lever.

– Wanna see the dead rat I found in my fridge? – Mate, that is grim!