he has managed some of the charges of the kingdom with known ability ; and laid them down with entire disinteressment

You can reroll if you don't like your character's initial stats.

Of course there is a sprinkling of wealthy dog men, but in the main it is working-class hopefuls who supply the fields[.]

It amuses me to think by day, when broad awake in my sad English prison, and among my crazy peers, how this nightly umbrageous French solitude of mine, so many miles and years away, is now but a common, bare, wide grassy plain, overlooked by a gaudy, beflagged grand-stand.