Ivory Handle Quotes

Son, only a pimp in a Louisiana whore- house carries pearl-handled revolvers. These are ivory.

Your wife is psychotic." "Michaela is just angry. Anger does fascinating things to a woman - not two react the same." "Yeah, well, she's overreacting. With a knife." He nodded with a small, almost nostalgic smile. "It was my wedding gift to her. The handle is ivory." Sick bastard. "Well, at least my murder weapon will have sentimental value." "That's actually an honour, you know." "I'll keep that in mind as my life flashes before my eyes.

Lexington wasn't a great city, like Philadelphia or New York, but around the Courthouse square, and along Main Street and Broadway, brick buildings reared two and three stories tall, and it was possible to buy almost anything: breeze-soft silks from France that came upriver from New Orleans, fine wines and cigars, pearl necklaces, and canes with ivory handles shaped like parrots or dogs'-heads or (in the case of Mary's older friend Cash Clay) scantily dressed ladies (but Cash was careful not to carry that one in company).

None of the palaces in Hell come close to Lucifer's in size or beauty. Lucifer lives at the top of a literal ivory tower, miles high. You can't even see the top from the ground. The joke is that he built it that high so he can lean out the window and pound on Heaven's floor with a broom handle when he wants them to turn down the choir.

she would have been as smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm.

As I approached the field, I called the tower, identified myself, and said I would like to land and pay my respects to General Patton if that was agreeable and convenient. I was cleared to land. When I parked, there was Georgie in his famous Jeep with the three-star flags flying, his helmet reflecting the sun gloriously and his ivory-handled revolvers at his side. He rushed forward, threw his arms around me, and with great tears streaming down his face, said, "Jimmy, I'm glad to see you. I didn't think anyone would ever call on a mean old son of a bitch like me.

So, Mr. Nick,' murmured the valet, applying shaving soap to his employer's face with an ivory-handled brush, 'are you writing a book?' Damn him, thought Lerner. He knows I detest conversation with a razor at my throat. 'My memoirs,' he muttered. 'A few jottings only. Waiting to die is such a bore, I write to pass the time.' ("The Overseer")

Volga drops from her place on the wall to join me. She moves excitably, still young enough to be impressed by this. Dano hops along the columns back to the arch, where he graffities profanity with his laser drill. “The razor?” I ask. He twirls it in his hand. It’s meant for a man twice his size. “A nasty little dick tickler.” “The razor,” I say again. “Course, boss.” He flips it to me casually. I snag it out of the air. Its handle is too big for my hand. Real ivory exterior and inlaid with gold filigree. The rest is brutally economical. In whip form it coils like a thin, sleeping snake. Eager to be rid of it, I shove it in a foam carry case and tuck it into my pack. “All right, kids.” I open the canister of custom acid and tip it onto the marble floor. “Time to go.

Cherie," he said softly, "I have tired of this game of charades. The time for defiance is at an end." He held both of my wrists in the iron grip of one hand and removed his dagger from the folds of his waistcloth with the other. I recognized the ivory handled blade as a jambiya, a small, curved, double-bladed, and extremely lethal weapon. I squeezed my eyes shut; driving my teeth into my lower lip to keep back the hysterical sob that rose in my throat. I only hoped he would do it quickly. But instead of the slash of his blade across my throat, I felt the sudden and steady pop of the buttons from my blouse. Bewildered, I opened my eyes into his. He lifted a brow over his mocking gaze. "You thought I would kill you, cherie?" He chuckled. "No. I would not waste such beauty as yours—unless you forced my hand. You comprehend me?

I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquerwork, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury pomp, there is much to be got from all these. But the artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still more to me. To become the spectator of one's life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my talking to you like this. You have not realized how I have developed. I was a schoolboy when you met me. I am a man now. I have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must not like me less. I am changed, but you must always be my friend.

Years ago, he shaved off his beard, without telling her, just appeared at the breakfast table one morning with half his face missing, or so it seemed to her in the first, shocked moment of seeing him. If she had met him in the street she would not have recognised him, except for his eyes. How strange he looked, grotesque, almost, with those indecently naked cheeks and the chin flat and square like the blunt edge of a stone axe. It was as if the top part of his head had been taken off and carved and trimmed and jammed down into the scooped-out jaws of a stranger. She almost wept, but he went on eating his toast as if nothing had happened. He had bought a cut-throat razor with an ivory handle, an antique thing from the last century; he showed it to her in its black velvet box lined with scarlet satin. She could not look at it without a shiver. He liked to show off his skill with it, and would leave the bathroom door open so she could admire the deft way he wielded the dangerous, gleaming thing, holding it at an elegant angle between fingertips and thumb, his little finger fastidiously crooked, and sweeping the blade raspingly through the snow-like foam. Harsh light above the bath and the steely shine of the mirror and one dark, humorously cocked eye glancing at her sideways from the glass. Where is it now, she wonders, that razor? In a week or two he got tired of using it and let his beard grow back.

He finds a basket and lays fish inside it. Charcoal is in a wooden bucket. Enrique lifts it, basket in his other hand, and moves through shadow toward daylight. A presence makes him turn his head. He sees no one, yet someone is there. He sets down fish and charcoal. Straightening up, Enrique slips his Bowie knife clear of its sheath. He listens, tries to sense the man’s place. This intruder lies low. Is concealed. Behind those barrels? In that corner, crouched down? Enrique shuts his eyes, holds his breath a moment and exhales, his breath’s movement the only sound, trying to feel on his skin some heat from another body. Where? Enrique sends his mind among barrels and sacks, under shelves, behind posts and dangling utensils. It finds no one. He is hiding. Wants not to be found. Is afraid. If he lies under a tarpaulin, he cannot see. To shoot blind would be foolish: likely to miss, certain to alert the others. Enrique steps around barrels, his boots silent on packed sand. Tarps lie parallel in ten-foot lengths, their wheaten hue making them visible in the shadowed space. They are dry and hold dust. All but one lies flat. There. Enrique imagines how it will be. To strike through the tarp risks confusion. Its heavy canvas can deflect his blade. But his opponent will have difficulty using his weapon. He might fire point-blank into Enrique’s weight above him, bearing down. To pull the tarpaulin clear is to lose his advantage; he will see the intruder who will see him. An El Norte mercenary with automatic rifle or handheld laser can cut a man in half. Knife in his teeth, its ivory handle smooth against lips and tongue, Enrique crouches low. Pushing hard with his legs, he dives onto the hidden shape. The man spins free as Enrique grasps, boots slipping on waxed canvas. His opponent feels slight, yet wiry strength defeats Enrique’s hold. He takes his knife in hand and rips a slit long enough to plunge an arm into his adversary’s shrouded panic. Enrique thrusts the blade’s point where he believes a throat must be. Two strong hands clamp his arm and twist against each other rapidly and hard. Pain flares across his skin. Enrique wrests his arm free and his knife flies from his grasp and disappears behind him. He clenches-up and, pivoting on his other hand, turns hard into a blind punch that smashes the hidden face. The dust of their struggle rasps in Enrique’s throat. His intended killer sucks in a hard breath and Enrique hits him again, then again, each time turning his shoulder into the blow. The man coughs out, “Do not kill me.” Enrique knows this voice. It is Omar the Turk. [pp. 60-61]

He went straight to ‘his alley,’ and when he reached the end of it he perceived, still on the same bench, that wellknown couple. Only, when he approached, it certainly was the same man; but it seemed to him that it was no longer the same girl. The person whom he now beheld was a tall and beautiful creature, possessed of all the most charming lines of a woman at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the most ingenuous graces of the child; a pure and fugitive moment, which can be expressed only by these two words,— ‘fifteen years.’ She had wonderful brown hair, shaded with threads of gold, a brow that seemed made of marble, cheeks that seemed made of rose-leaf, a pale flush, an agitated whiteness, an exquisite mouth, whence smiles darted like sunbeams, and words like music, a head such as Raphael would have given to Mary, set upon a neck that Jean Goujon would have attributed to a Venus. And, in order that nothing might be lacking to this bewitching face, her nose was not handsome— it was pretty; neither straight nor curved, neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian nose, that is to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure,— which drives painters to despair, and charms poets. When Marius passed near her, he could not see her eyes, which were constantly lowered. He saw only her long chestnut lashes, permeated with shadow and modesty. This did not prevent the beautiful child from smiling as she listened to what the white-haired old man was saying to her, and nothing could be more fascinating than that fresh smile, combined with those drooping eyes. For a moment, Marius thought that she was another daughter of the same man, a sister of the former, no doubt. But when the invariable habit of his stroll brought him, for the second time, near the bench, and he had examined her attentively, he recognized her as the same. In six months the little girl had become a young maiden; that was all. Nothing is more frequent than this phenomenon. There is a moment when girls blossom out in the twinkling of an eye, and become roses all at once. One left them children but yesterday; today, one finds them disquieting to the feelings. This child had not only grown, she had become idealized. As three days in April suffice to cover certain trees with flowers, six months had sufficed to clothe her with beauty. Her April had arrived. One sometimes sees people, who, poor and mean, seem to wake up, pass suddenly from indigence to luxury, indulge in expenditures of all sorts, and become dazzling, prodigal, magnificent, all of a sudden. That is the result of having pocketed an income; a note fell due yesterday. The young girl had received her quarterly income. And then, she was no longer the school-girl with her felt hat, her merino gown, her scholar’s shoes, and red hands; taste had come to her with beauty; she was a well-dressed person, clad with a sort of rich and simple elegance, and without affectation. She wore a dress of black damask, a cape of the same material, and a bonnet of white crape. Her white gloves displayed the delicacy of the hand which toyed with the carved, Chinese ivory handle of a parasol, and her silken shoe outlined the smallness of her foot. When one passed near her, her whole toilette exhaled a youthful and penetrating perfume.

Patton had been a reflective man, an extraordinarily well-read student of wars and military leaders, ancient and modern, with a curiosity about his war to match his energy. No detail had been too minor or too dull for him, nor any task too humble. Everything from infantry squad tactics to tank armor plate and chassis and engines had interested him. To keep his mind occupied while he was driving through a countryside, he would study the terrain and imagine how he might attack this hill or defend that ridge. He would stop at an infantry position and look down the barrel of a machine gun to see whether the weapon was properly sited to kill counterattacking Germans. If it was not, he would give the officers and men a lesson in how to emplace the gun. He had been a military tailor’s delight of creased cloth and shined leather, and he had worn an ivory-handled pistol too because he thought he was a cavalier who needed these trappings for panache. But if he came upon a truck stuck in the mud with soldiers shirking in the back, he would jump from his jeep, berate the men for their laziness, and then help them push their truck free and move them forward again to battle. By dint of such lesson and example, Patton had formed his Third Army into his ideal of a fighting force. In the process he had come to understand the capabilities of his troops and he had become more knowledgeable about the German enemy than any other Allied general on the Western Front. Patton had been able to command with certainty, overcoming the mistakes that are inevitable in the practice of the deadly art as well as personal eccentricities and public gaffes that would have ruined a lesser general, because he had always stayed in touch with the realities of his war.

Among the white scouts were numbered some of the most noted of their class. The most prominent man among them was "Wild Bill". Wild bill was a strange character, just the one which a novelist might gloat over. Whether on foot or on horseback, he was one of the most perfect types of physical manhood I ever saw. Of his courage there could be no question; it had been brought to the test on too many occasions to admit a doubt. His skill in the use of the rifle and pistol was unerring; while his deportment was exactly the opposite of what might be expected from a man of his surroundings. It was entirely free of bluster or bravado. He seldom spoke of himself unless requested to do so. His conversation, strange to say, never bordered either on the vulgar or blasphemous. His influence among the frontiersmen was unbounded, his word was law; and many are the personal quarrels and disturbances which he has checked among his comrades by his simple announcement that "this has gone far enough" if need be followed by the ominous warning that when persisted in or renewed the quarreler "must settle it with me". Wild Bill is anything but a quarrelsome man; yet no one but himself can enumerate the many conflicts in which he has been engaged, and which have almost invariably resulted in the death of his adversary. I have personal knowledge of at least half a dozen men whom he has at various times killed, one of these being at the time a member of my command. Wild Bill always carried two handsome ivory-handled revolvers of the large size; he was never seen without them. Where this is the common custom, brawls or personal difficulties are seldom if ever settled by blows. The quarrel is not from word to blow, but from a word to revolver, and he who can draw and fire first is the best man. An item which has been floating lately through the columns of the press states that, "the funeral of 'Jim Bludso,' who was killed the other day by 'Wild Bill' took place today" and then adds: "The funeral expenses were borne by 'Wild Bill'" What could be more thoughtful than this? Not only to send a fellow mortal out of the world, but to pay the expenses of the transit.

By April 23, 2014, thirty-four cases and six deaths from Ebola in Liberia were recorded. By mid-June, 16 more people died. At the time it was thought to be malaria but when seven more people died the following month tests showed that was the Ebola virus. The primary reason for the spreading of the Ebola virus was the direct contact from one person to the next and the ingesting of bush meat. Soon doctors and nurses also became infected. On July 2, 2014, the head surgeon of Redemption Hospital was treated at the JFK Medical Center in Monrovia, where he died from the disease. His death was followed by four nurses at Phebe Hospital in Bong County. At about the same time two U.S. health care workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and a nurse were also infected with the disease. However, they were medically evacuated from Liberia to the United States for treatment where they made a full recovery. Another doctor from Uganda was not so lucky and died from the disease. Arik Air suspended all flights between Nigeria and Liberia and checkpoints were set up at all the ports and border crossings. In August of 2014, the impoverished slum area of West Point was cordoned off. Riots ensued as protesters turned violent. The looting of a clinic of its supplies, including blood-stained bed sheets and mattresses caused the military to shoot into the crowds. Still more patients became infected, causing a shortage of staff and logistics. By September there had been a total of 3,458 cases of which there were 1,830 deaths according to the World Health Organization. Hospitals and clinics could no longer handle this crisis and patients who were treated outside died before they could get help. There were cases where the bodies were just dumped into the Mesurado River. The Ivory Coast out of compassion, opened carefully restricted humanitarian routes and resumed the previously suspended flights to Liberia. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the president of Libera sent a letter to President Barack Obama concerning the outbreak of Ebola that was on the verge of overrunning her country. The message was desperate, “I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us.” Having been a former finance minister and World Bank official, Johnson Sirleaf was not one for histrionics however she recognized the pandemic as extremely dangerous. The United States responded to her request and American troops came in and opened a new 60-bed clinic in the Sierra Leone town of Kenema, but by then the outbreak was described as being out of control. Still not understanding the dangerous contagious aspects of this epidemic at least eight Liberian soldiers died after contracting the disease from a single female camp follower. In spite of being a relatively poor country, Cuba is one of the most committed in deploying doctors to crisis zones. It sent more than 460 Cuban doctors and nurses to West Africa. In October Germany sent medical supplies and later that month a hundred additional U.S. troops arrived in Liberia, bringing the total to 565 to assist in the fight against the deadly disease. To understand the severity of the disease, a supply order was placed on October 15th for a 6 month supply of 80,000 body bags and 1 million protective suits. At that time it was reported that 223 health care workers had been infected with Ebola, and 103 of them had died in Liberia. Fear of the disease also slowed down the functioning of the Liberian government. President Sirleaf, had in an emergency announcement informed absent government ministers and civil service leaders to return to their duties. She fired 10 government officials, including deputy ministers in the central government who failed to return to work.

There was a soft snikt as Ebin stepped forward, five inches of cold steel hopping from the ivory-handled switchblade in his hand. The agent had time to look surprised before the blade sunk into the side of his neck. He gargled and slapped at the knife and Ebin wrenched it to the side, cutting his throat almost to the spine. "Oh, Jesus." Simon was the only one to talk. Daniel stared in silent shock as the jugular vein burst and moonlit blood splashed back onto the pavement. The lifeless head lolled back, and the bitter grin slashed beneath it opened into a wide, dying dawn. Blood spurted out; it stained their shoes and pant legs, a thin line of it flicked across Ebin's face. He didn't wipe it off.

I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquer-work, carved ivories, exquisite surroundings, luxury, pomp, there is much to be got from all these. But the artistic temperament that they create, or at any rate reveal, is still more to me. To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my talking to you like this. You have not realised how I have devel-oped. I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must not like me less. I am changed, but you must always be my friend. Of course I am very fond of Harry. But I know that you are better than he is. You are not stronger — you are too much afraid of life t but you are better. And how happy we used to be together! Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel with me. I am what I am. There is nothing more to be said.

Judge had definitely noticed him, but the man had been quiet the entire time. When Michaels came over to glare at him, Judge had to be sure not to show his surprise or amusement. The bold little fucker. Actually he wasn’t so little. He was tall and built. Compact muscles under smooth, ivory skin. No doubt he was as macho and straight as an arrow, those kinds usually were. Judge was eager to see how the man handled himself.

Patton pulls his ivory-handled pistol from its holster with his right hand. With his left, he backhands Bennett across the face with such force that nearby doctors rush to intervene. The medical staff is disturbed by Patton’s actions and file a report. Word of the incidents soon reaches Eisenhower. “I must so seriously question,” Ike writes to Patton on August 16, “your good judgment and your self-discipline as to raise serious doubts in my mind as to your future usefulness.” But that is to be the end of it. Eisenhower needs Patton’s tactical genius. As Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy will later remind Ike, Abraham Lincoln was faced with similar concerns about the leadership of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. “I can’t spare this man,” Lincoln had responded to those calling for Grant’s dismissal. “He fights.” Patton fights. *

His own hands were full, sandwich and paper cup, but the small ivory knob on the silver handle was a temptation. Just a few turns and he could fill the car with the sound of the rushing wind. The hair was mussed across the back of his father’s head, the familiar gleam of his white scalp peering through. His father leaned forward to put the china teacup on the dashboard and then, leaning back, placed his hand over his shoulder, kneading the material of his shirt, raising the shoulder toward his neck, like a pitcher on the mound. “Are you all right?” their mother asked, all their voices grown soft and gentle now that they were out of the wind. “An ache is all,” their father said. The wind seemed to come up from under the car, it pressed against the window, muffled, shut out, although they all still felt the sting of it on their cheeks. Michael placed the paper cup, almost empty, between the knees of his jeans and moved his fingers to the ivory knob. His hands were pale, the fingers plump and squared-off, the nails flat and broad, just like his father’s.

Lens Larque is said to be enamoured of the whip; he considers it a trusty friend and a convenient instrument for the punishment of his enemies. He uses it often to this end, judging it preferable to other methods. At Sadabra he owns a great house with a semi-circular room where he sits to take his victual: great heaps of hork and pummigum* consumed with tankards of must. For savor he keeps by his side a fine short-handled whip, with a lash twelve and a half feet long. The pommel is ivory and engraved with the whip’s name: PANAK. The reference has never been elucidated, to this writer’s knowledge. The lash terminates in a bifurcated flap of leather four inches long: the ‘scorpion’. Around the wall stand Lens Larque’s enemies, manacled to rings and naked as eggs. To the buttocks of each is pasted a heart-shaped target three inches in diameter. To enliven his meal Lens Larque attempts to snap off the targets with the flutter of his whip, and his skill is said to be fine.

It’s quite funny, you were never Conrad’s first choice. You were the substitute. But your promiscuous sister couldn’t keep her legs closed, and well, she was no longer pure for the Ivory family.” Becca clicked her tongue. My body went cold. My eyes blurred and everything Becca said no longer sounded like a language I understood. “My… sister? No, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Layla had no idea who this family was. She… she was raped by Trent.” “Did you actually see her being raped? Or is that what she told you?” Becca pursed her thin lips at me. Blinking rapidly, I thought about how I hadn’t seen Layla being raped; I’d just hear them. Hear them… having sex? But she’d always come back into the closet with me. She’d always look repulsed and heartbroken. “She fell in love with Trent, and he loved her, but business is business. When he found out Ian Ivory was no longer buying Layla for the two million dollars he had promised him, he couldn’t handle it. Layla was supposed to be his largest transaction and his way out of the Nashville slums. He couldn’t believe having sex with her had wrecked him. So… he set it all up, and he put Layla up to it as well. He said if she helped him get you to go to the Ivory’s house, he’d marry her.” Becca paused. Leaning in, she brushed my hair from my face with her blood-stained palm. “It must really hurt to know your sister didn’t want you, either.” She frowned at me with insincere sadness.

Having folded the letter, smoothed it with a massive ivory paper-knife, and put money in the envelope, with the pleasure always aroused in him by the handling of his well-arranged writing accessories, he rang.

Without Alfie even touching the handle, the door shut slowly and firmly behind him. There was the sound of a key being turned. Somehow he was locked in. “How splendid! Two pm precisely! You are right on time for your appointment. Come on in…” Miss Root’s voice had a hypnotic quality to it. As much as Alfie knew in his mind he should run away, his legs propelled him forward. He was moving slowly and surely towards her. “Come to Mummy…” she whispered. As he drew closer, he could see the source of bright light was a vast Anglepoise lamp. Now Alfie was standing in her shadow he could make out Miss Root more clearly. Looking up at her, the first thing he noticed were her huge gleaming white teeth. As big as the ivory keys on a grand piano. Next he noticed her eyes.

Jardin du Luxembourg A merry-go-round of freshly painted horses sprung from a childish world vividly bright before dispersing in adult oblivion and losing its quaint legendary light spins in the shadows of a burbling circus. Some draw toy coaches but remain upright; a roebuck flashes past, a fierce red lion and every time an elephant ivory-white. As if down in the forest of Fontainebleau a little girl wrapped up in royal blue rides round on a unicorn; a valiant son hangs on to the lion with a frantic laugh, hot fists gripping the handles for dear life; then that white elephant with ivory tusks - an intense scrum of scarves and rumpled socks though the great whirligig is just for fun. The ring revolves until the time runs out, squealing excitedly to the final shout as pop-eyed children gasp there in their grey jackets and skirts, wild bobble and beret. Now you can study faces, different types, the tiny features starting to take shape with proud, heroic grins for the grown-ups, shining and blind as if from a mad scrape.

house settle into the dark, and where my grandfather and I had seen the amazing and for all purposes apocryphal orrery, with its ivory planets and moons and brass sun, and I had turned the wooden-handled crank and made the entire arrangement of spheres spin on their axes and around one another and the sun in perfect symphony. I decided to break into Mrs. Hale’s house and find the orrery. Nothing in the world seemed more important suddenly than turning the crank and feeling the perfectly machined resistance it offered and the perfect ratio of force applied and degrees that the crank turned to the various periods of the celestial bodies, from the almost imperceptible orbits of the outer planets to the smallest little moons, which spun as quickly and neatly as tops.

The orrery stood on an oak dais in the middle of a room that had been the study of probably eight generations of Mrs. Hale’s forefathers. Four brass legs supported two horizontal brass dials connected by vertical posts, in between which was a series of coaxial shafts, stacked with telescoping gears, and a long brass hand crank with a wooden handle. A kettle-sized brass sphere, set above the middle of the upper dial, represented the sun. Its surface was so polished and reflective it not only threw the room’s light back out, as if generating the glow itself, but also seemed to possess depth, as if one might be able to plunge into its fish-eyed fathoms, into another brassy room. The planets and their moons were made of proportionally sized ivory balls. Each was fixed at the end of a brass arm. My grandfather and I stood looking at the marvelous machine in silence.

Aubry Park was a glorious Elizabethan manor, lovingly restored in the last century and equipped with numerous gothic undertones- enough to send Charlotte's mother into a ghost-seeking frenzy. The massive, cream-colored stone house sat hidden in a forest like some romantic woodland folly. Upon first approach, it seemed rather modest, enclosed in a small courtyard, the upper floors timbered and gabled, but after one ventured a look past the facade, the manor sprawled onward, connecting to a myriad of wings, towers hidden by tall trees and climbing vines and private walled gardens. "Enchanting," Charlotte murmured, running her fingertips along the soft bristles of an ivory-handled brush.

Do you know what it is that boosts her cooking the most?" "Erm... her strength, which lets her handle even bone-in meat as she will?" "That is an asset, yes. But her highest skill is exactly the opposite of power... it's her sensitivity. The lips are a part of the body that are particularly sensitive to heat. However, only hers are sensitive enough to tell the exact temperature. But Ikumi Mito's sensitivity shines brightest when she handles the meat with her hands. Watch her fingertips. Do you see the delicate grace with which she touches it? She is like a pianist, tickling the ivories in an elegant solo. It is a sonata of meat.

During our march the simoom was fearful, and the heat so intense that it was impossible to draw the guncases out of their leather covers, which it was necessary to cut open. All woodwork was warped; ivory knife-handles were split; paper broke when crunched in the hand, and the very marrow seemed to be dried out of the bones. The extreme dryness of the air induced an extraordinary amount of electricity in the hair and in all woollen materials. A Scotch plaid laid upon a blanket for a few hours adhered to it, and upon being withdrawn at night a sheet of flame was produced, accompanied by tolerably loud reports.