The classy stuff is pretty to talk about, it furnishes inspiration for the dramatic writer, but it is the hocum, the jazbo, what vaudeville styles comedy acts, which please an audience.

to patrol a frontier

It's [playing sports] about divots, brush-burns, rally caps, the Miracle On Ice, and Lions, and Tigers and Bears (Oh my!).

While he meditated on the project, he could not help smiling at the cullibility of his father, who had thus, he thought, taken into his protection, and made the companion of his wife and daughter, the deserted mistress of Willoughby.