[…] & besides necessity & an impossibility of liuing togetherwise allwayes attending it wᵗʰ, & to thanke heauen for it you cannot pleade.

She was sitting perched on her desk, in that nonchalant, ‘mmkay?’ way teachers do when they’re trying to pretend they’re down with the kids.

They still frequented the casinos and went to St Anna Ballroom in Love Lane and to cabarets at Ladow’s Casanova or Del Monte’s where the curfew could be seen off in style until dawn when it was lifted. They still took their breaks in places like Soochow or Hangchow or on the island called Pootoo, where the ‘trouble’ was made to seem far away.

I’m an inn boy. I run a little wine shop⁶ here at Three Mile Stop beyond the Northern Pass in Shang-ts’ai County,* where everybody traveling north and south, wheelbarrow pushers, pole bearers, merchants, and what have you, come to have a drink and stay the night. In present-day Honan province.]