Nimble and sinister tricks and shifts.

Nine months of intensive Fuzhounese lessons got me only so far in listening comprehension of the local chitchat in Longyan. Once I opened my mouth and needed to communicate predominantly in the national dialect of Mandarin (with a smattering of simple Fuzhounese), phenotype be damned—my foreignness was marked.

They yanked the product as soon as they learned it was unsafe.

What pity it is that the New Yorkian of that honourable body should make them so blind to real interest as not to prefer the first city on the finest river in the most respectable state in America, to a parcel of buildings, confusedly situated on a pitiful island which has neither ice in winter to protect it, nor force in summer sufficient to prevent Congress and all their papers being carried off by pirates.