If the summary of the Tientsin society is accurate, a famine population of more than 14,000,000 is already bad enough. If it takes five dollars to keep one of them alive, […]

‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Marcelonas? Is that your name, Doyle Marcelonas?' ‘Marcelunis,’ he said. ‘That's a real Chicago name,’ I said. ‘Right?’ ‘Marquette Park,’ he said. ‘A South Side boy,’ I said. ‘South Side loogan,’ he said. ‘Grew up in Marquette Park and I live in Beverly now.’ I thought I had him sidetracked. Loogan meant he was Lithuanian, and I wanted to take the conversation in that direction. Didn't get the chance.

The Busby Berkeley stylisations are grim enough, but the high school lawn-mowing has to be seen to be disbelieved.

[…]The possibility that he might prefer the excitement of such an adventure to an expedition into Yorkshire did occur to the Major, but he discarded it: Richmond had been within ames-ace of jumping at the chance offered him,[…].