He claimed innocence; he had done nothing wrong, and had done nothing to provoke anyone else. Pointing an accusatory finger toward the other man, he said that he and the woman were in an apartment, “just starting intercoursing, when that guy busted through the door.” As the reader may have surmised, the guy busting down the door was the husband of the female intercourser.

Derelict and well-nigh forgotten, Port Victoria now watches the great ships on the Medway—ships that might have berthed in its docks.

Now that's what I call a sledge.

[…]such objects belonged to the domain of the comic poet, and of the lighter kinds of poetry. For the more serious kinds, for pragmatic poetry, to use an excellent expression of Polybius, they were more difficult and severe in the range of subjects which they permitted.