'Molly Houses' — places where homosexual men gather— may have been around as early as 1700: this is where the historian Rictor Norton in fact locates the origins of a gay subculture in England (Norton 1992).

It is depressing to watch the bitterness of the disinherited in these sorting-pens; the surliness of outcasts and tradefallen failures—yet no sooner do they step ashore at the Battery than they fill their lungs with American air, which has a marvellous effect.

Don't you come the high-and-holy on me. You and your smooth, big, phony stuffed-shirt of a father.

Once upon a time on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental-splendour.