a cliché-ridden romance novel

A chap named Eleazir Kendrick and I had chummed in together the summer afore and built a fish-weir and shanty at Setuckit Point, down Orham way. For a spell we done pretty well.

The party was a scene of unrestrained debauchery.

Most of the European press (and, indeed, most European elites) talk as if Europe must be laicist, which is the word they use for aggressively secular, in the manner of the French Revolution.