At one time major appliances (white goods), washer, dryer, and refrigerator stores would last more than 20 years.

[…] she [Queen Mab] comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;

to hold an office at pleasure: to hold it indefinitely until it is revoked

This was the kind of operator who would tell you to be there at nine sharp and if you weren't sitting quietly with a pleased smile on your pan when he floated in two hours later on a double Gibson, he would have a paroxysm of outraged executive ability […].