Among these cultured hostesses, a leading figure in the belle époque was the Comtesse de Greffulhe.

He would pitch into her, and pitch into himself, and then he would dwell on her good qualities, […]

I don’t have chionophobia, a fear of snow. I’ve been an avid snowshoer and a snowball flinger of some repute.

Coleman was the last of the aristocratic governors; not truly aristocratic, of course, but such as is so designated in Mississippi, where the landed gentry claims a bloodline that disappears kindly into the groundmists four or five generations ago, an aristocracy of certitude that nothing will ever change.