a narrow base, as the petals of a Rose, where the claw is very short

Let it be considered a delicate intimation on the part of the historian that he is going back to the town in which Oliver Twist was born; the reader taking it for granted that there are good and substantial reasons for making the journey.

I can recall my flabbergastation when in the house of a Jutlander of the middle class I heard him holding fluent converse with his children in some heathen dialect...

At dawn we really let 'em have it with a 30 minute artillery barrage.