For instance, some merchants suppress the names of “serial returners”; basically, customers who repeatedly buy products that they quickly return after using them once.

The pouring and pattering of rain and the beating of hail require four different contrivances. The most novel of these is a wooden box, about twelve feet long and six inches square, inside of which are numerous slanting sheets of tin, punctured with small holes. A number of peas are rushed continuously up and down the box, rolling over the punctured tin and tumbling from one sheet to the other in a manner like that described of the iron balls in the thunder box.

Richard Dunwoody . . . did however perform one minor miracle; managing to eat a bowl of cereal on horseback while looking at the camera and still finding his mouth with the spoon without spillage.

He gazed around until on the lid of a spinet he spotted a promising collection of bottles, […] a meerschaum pipe and a jar half-full of wasps and apricot jam. He found some glasses which didn't look very clean and polished them on a chintz window curtain.