Now in its 46th year, the Society welcomes everyone who can sing, act, dance, paint, sew, draw, hammer nails or remove nails that have been mishammered.

He looked in vain into the stalls for the butcher who had sold fresh meat twice a week, on market days, and he felt a genuine thrill of pleasure when he recognized the red bandana turban of old Aunt Lyddy, the ancient negro woman who had sold him gingerbread and fried fish, and told him weird tales of witchcraft and conjuration, in the old days when, as an idle boy, he had loafed about the market-house.

When the captain offered a free round of grog to the crew, every man Jack of them lined up for a cupful.

He began to feel … the elation of money coming his way, the self-congratulation that followed – because the gain was all down to his inspired decisions — and then the almost equal counteremotion of sickening anxiety: a fear that there was some aspect of the trade he hadn't covered, some twist that even he had not foreseen.