A new interstate blasted like an infinite airstrip straight through the hills toward the horizon; it had been done so brutally that we kept seeing on either side of the freeway corridor the stump-ends of the old cindery roads, and boarded-up tourist traps dangling precariously on the sheared hillsides.

No low beatings and knockings about, no jokings and squeakings like your precious Punches, but always the same, with a constantly unchanging air of coldness and gentility[…]

He was without exception the clumsiest and most mutton-fisted horseman I have ever observed.

He has considerably improved upon the planing machine, in his “Jim Crow” machine, so called because the cutter reverses itself and works both ways, and in fact adapts itself to any position to do its work.