He snatched a sandwich before catching the train.

[…]the news I had just received, struck me as the wildest, most ridiculous incongruity I had ever heard of or imagined,—and I gave vent to a shout of laughter.

Points of special effect were the music—for two first trebles and two alti—in which Mendelssohn has wrapped the words of the heavenly voice, “Saul! Saul! why persecutest thou Me?” the drums at the opening of “Arise and shine,” the brass interludes (as well as the general grandeur) of “Sleepers wake”—surely the finest treatment of a choral known to music—the well-known violoncello accompaniment to “Be thou faithful” (rendered by Mr. Pettitt); and the always fresh grace of “How lovely are the messengers.”

Like [Julius] Caesar, individuals often have little trouble pointing to the rubicons in their own lives. Nor do historians have a hard time determining when the fate of charismatic leaders is sealed. The task of discerning where institutions cross their rubicons, however, is far more difficult, for institutional movements resemble the movement of an amoeba far more than they resemble that of a man.