All too easy, in these circumstances, for students to think that anthropology is nothing but a clutch of conjectures about the nature of humankind and a libraryful of books about the apparently strange customs of exotically different peoples.

The terrified sailors would have begun to depart quicklier than they did, had not fear itself made them move slowly.

To annualise net profit, divide the year-to-date net profit by the number of completed months, and multiply by twelve.

… the undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark: forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated ‘kitchen’; wherein sat a slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very much out of repair.