Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects.

The children walking two and two in red and blue and green: Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow. 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 11, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans,[…], published 1853, OCLC 999756093: The beadle ... generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a ridiculous institution ... The policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that must be borne with until government shall abolish him.

What linked these disparate scientific actors beyond their efforts to terminate herbicidal warfare was their insistence that the antiherbicide campaign was not an expression of contemporary environmentalism.

The florist suggested some dendros for our wedding.