It was springy weather after Easter, and she wore a pale lavender silk dress with myriad little ruchings down the front, each edged with a narrow band of real lace.

...some of the general rules and inventions for drinking, as good as printed precepts or statutes by act of parliament, that go from drunkard to drunkard; as... to have some shoeing-horn to pull on your wine, as a rasher on the coals or a red herring... Shoeing-horns, sometimes called gloves, are also described by Bishop Hall in his Mundus alter et idem. Then sir, comes me up a service of shoeing-horns of all sorts; salt cakes, red herrings, anchovies, and gammon of bacon, and abundance of such pullers on. ... And yet a drawer-on too; i.e.an incitement to appetite: the phrase is yet in use. This drawer-on was also technically termed a puller-on, and a shoeing-horn in drink.

Western Pacific wisely devoted its design energies to the articulateds which produced most of its gross, left the 4-6-0's that came with the road plus a few secondhand Florida East Coast Mountains for its sparse passenger service.

Yep, the smartass pussymonger of Rose Street, you once called me, has passed through his earthly Purgatory and if I survive this trial of my feckless soul, I shall enter a monastery upon my return.