‘And the Punches,’ said William. ‘There’s cattle! A Suffolk Punch, when he’s a good un, is worth his weight in gold. Did you ever breed any Suffolk Punches yourself, sir?’

The teacher's voice inflects the pulse of nêhiyawêwin as he teaches us. He says a prayer in the first class. Nouns, we learn, have a gender. In French, nouns are male or female, but in Cree, nouns are living or non-living, animate or inanimate.

Our guide surprised us by refraining from exploiting it for propaganda purposes. In fact, she seemed to take a genuine delight in all the gardens of Su-chou- a fact which may explain why we saw so many of them. Not once did she say so much as a word about the decadence of life under the emperors.

He had followed Larry faithfully for two days, getting yelled at and grieved over and yogied into a pretzel and fucked over by all sorts of weirdoes who seemed to find him a nice object to act on.