When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman.

Suitably daunted by ultracrepidarian angst, I record here some tentative readings in rhetoric's expanded domain and venture a few preliminary observations on their relation to the electronic word.

There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

Some nobler token I have kept apart / For Livia and Octavia, to induce / Their mediation; […]