The tale of Meade and Ms. Althouse is a cross between the studiedness of a Victorian epistolary courtship —a modern-day Robert Browning googling his dear Elizabeth Barrett — and the wackiness of 21st-century life online.

To which she replied sweetly, shaking that fine cervine head: ‘At any moment tell yourself that things are much better that they have any right to be.’

They talk about education, everlastingly, as if it were a cure-all instead of a process for making unfit nations unfitter […]

It can be assumed that as the earlier kite shield transformed into the heater shape, there must have been versions in between the two styles. Indeed, in artwork of the Medieval period, shields are rarely present after 1450 and even then are quite small. The development of flattop heaters from larger kite shields is likely the result of increased fighting on horseback and the use of improved armor.