This attempt to burglarize the house betrayed the caliber of the enemy.

Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?

The Akto region is a part of China that has been rocked with conflict. In April 1990 an “armed counter revolutionary rebellion” occurred in Baren Township of Akto County. “There were over twenty deaths, mainly of members of Islamic minorities. Later in 1990...fifty mosques were closed down and the construction of 153 others was halted.”

Penrod is so referential as to be almost a work of postmodernism—assuming Tarkington could have imagined such a thing with modernism itself just beginning to steamroll over him.