The two German ships soon showed us and the battle-cruiser Indefatigable in company, a clean pair of heels, though the cruiser HMS Dublin managed to keep them in sight until they disappeared into the Straits of Messina to coal.

those prodigious swarms that had settled themselves in every part of it [Italy]

[…]; and so warmly did he share the partiality of Lady Mary and Lady Jemima for the gentle recluse, whom he persisted in calling “la belle au bois dormant,” that, when informed that though the funeral baked meats of the late Earl were not to furnish forth the marriage-table of his successor, the bombazine of the two noble spinsters was, in a decent time, to give place to bridesmaiden white, he was unable to resist a mild “hurrah!”

The appeal to experience was the cry of the man from Missouri—the demand to be shown.