The charge that Keppler made most often in his anti-third-term campaign was that of “emperorism,” a fear many Americans shared.

She had the strangest sense that the City was, simultaneously, both perfectly normal and dismissably unbelievable.

Had she spent the best part of a day in titivating herself in order that she might sit plunged in darkness, with nothing but her feet and her nose revealed?

The name scorpionweed comes from the curling habit of the blossoming flower heads which somewhat resemble the flexed tail of a scorpion in striking position.