An indescribable character of faded gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike all the other houses in the street—though they were all built on one monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped brick-and-mortar pothooks—reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber.

Would you mind not wearing so much eye gunk? Just because you're mad at me. And I hate that yellow dress. Mavis does her eyes up like a circus clown.

On the 13th of December, at eight in the morning, Cape St. Martin, coast of Spain, bearing south-south-west six leagues, the british 16-gun brig-sloop Halcyon, captain Henry Whitmarsh Pearse, perceived three sail standing towards her from the land. Being on contrary tacks, the two parties closed fast; and, when about four miles apart, the Halcyon discovered the strangers to be an armed ship, brig, and xebec.

And while cellphones are at least experientially related to the land line, and e-mail feels tangentially related to the fax, texting is simultaneously a throwback to the telegraph and a harbinger of a new age.