Light applause from the shaded edges of the courtyard, where in twos and threes curious ninjettes had been pacing, whispering, touching.

But let us defend the poor battered old language against those who use words in private Pickwickian senses of their own[…]

Dazed, like sleepwalkers, Washingtonians clustered that evening and late into the night in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue. They sang the National Anthem and other patriotic or semipatriotic songs, and when they tired of singing, they stood, or sat, or even knelt on the grass, simply staring at the now-darkened Executive Mansion, even as they or possibly others might turn their eyes toward the heavens, hoping, beseeching. . . .

It is nearly the same thing on stubble land as raftering is on grass land.