Evidently the French blockade of Formosa is not very effective, or else the Pescadores are not included in the blockaded district. The Daily Press of 31st December states:—We learn by private letter that there have been no blockading ships at Taiwan or at Takao during the last seven days. The blockade is a purely paper one. Troops and treasure are pouring into South Formosa.

Philander went into the next room[…]and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack.

The Irish maid Betty Flanagan’s bonnets and ribbons, her sauciness, her idleness, her reckless prodigality of kitchen candles, her consumption of tea and sugar, and so forth occupied and amused the old lady almost as much as the doings of her former household […] about which the good lady talked a hundred times a day. And besides Betty Flanagan, Mrs. Sedley had all the maids-of-all-work in the street to superintend.

[…] Iasius ('healer') is the physic finger; Idas ('he of Mount Ida' — Rhea's seat) is the oracular little finger.