Books like this aim to arrive at a more unified understanding of a broad area, and how its subareas are related.

“The juniorest Palmer said he wished he was in Heaven.” I really don’t know, I do not know what’s to be done with that young fellow; he’s always a-wishing something horrid.

Finding us easy in our ways, he […] told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext. An intransitive use of the word.

[…] in other words, the itive verb here signals narrative dissonance, with all the attendant effects […]