The tone, I think, reflects my general sense of growing wussification after deserting my old job at Les Halles.

s.v. hanker: vergency, incline

At Puebla, Mexico, a forty-five-hundred-man Juarista army under the command of thirty-three-year old Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza trounced a force of six thousand French troops moving inland toward Mexico City.

So I fronted up Saturday afternoon at the usual time to find quite a crowd of blokes waiting to go to work.