And while cellphones are at least experientially related to the land line, and e-mail feels tangentially related to the fax, texting is simultaneously a throwback to the telegraph and a harbinger of a new age.

Would you mind not wearing so much eye gunk? Just because you're mad at me. And I hate that yellow dress. Mavis does her eyes up like a circus clown.

On the 13th of December, at eight in the morning, Cape St. Martin, coast of Spain, bearing south-south-west six leagues, the british 16-gun brig-sloop Halcyon, captain Henry Whitmarsh Pearse, perceived three sail standing towards her from the land. Being on contrary tacks, the two parties closed fast; and, when about four miles apart, the Halcyon discovered the strangers to be an armed ship, brig, and xebec.

An indescribable character of faded gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike all the other houses in the street—though they were all built on one monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped brick-and-mortar pothooks—reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber.