I failed to strike anything of any benefit at all, and I became entirely disgusted and threw the whole thing over.

Francati had filled the cask with fresh water; he had also laid in a supply of finnochio and eggs, so that the dinner we had, after leaving Pæstum, was quite a swell affair.

Mansplaining is a bit of this year’s wombspeak, a coinage of great self-satisfaction and smugness which attempts to put down reconciling reality to facts, naming fables when they are fables, and contesting any of the dogmas of the enlightened sisterhood, as mere condescension from the other gender. It should be paired with “femsplaining” which is of course pure unshampooed truth — as determined, of course, by when and if it works for the cause.

A valley in the moon could scarce have been lonelier , could scarce have suggested more strongly the feeling of preteriteness and extinction