The cupboards were oak and the worksurface granite.

The acuteness of sound in stringed instruments depends on three circumstances—length, thickness, and tension. The shorter, smaller, and tighter a string, the more acute the sound. […] In the violin, when you desire an acute sound, you tighten the string. When you wish a loud sound, you draw the bow over the strings heavily.

He looked in bewilderment at number 24, the final house with its regalia of stucco swags and bows.

Now can any one, free from prejudice, imagine that if infant baptism had been from the beginning a primitive apostolic usage, such a superannuated dotardly affair as this Carthage decision could possibly have occurred, or that such a question should have been debatead as late as the last half of the 3d century?