DOWN AMONG THE DEAD WEEDS Can it be supposed that all this time Master Geoffrey Mordacks, of the city of York, land agent, surveyor, and general factor, and maker and doer of everything whether general or particular, was spending his days in doing nothing, and his nights in dreaming?
If so, he must have had a sunstroke on that very bright day of the year when he stirred up the minds of the washer-women, and the tongue of Widow Precious.

But Flamborough is not at all the place for sunstroke, although it reflects so much in whitewash; neither had Mordacks the head to be sunstruck, but a hard, impenetrable, wiry poll, as weather-proof as felt asphalted.

At first sight almost everybody said that he must have been a soldier, at a time when soldiers were made of iron, whalebone, whip-cord, and ramrods.
Such opinions he rewarded with a grin, and shook his straight shoulders straighter.

If pride of any sort was not beneath him, as a matter of strict business, it was the pride which he allowed his friends to take in his military figure and aspect.
This gentleman's place of business was scarcely equal to the expectations which might have been formed from a view of the owner.

The old King's Staith, on the right hand after crossing Ouse Bridge from the Micklegate, is a passageway scarcely to be called a street, but combining the features of an alley, a lane, a jetty, a quay, and a barge-walk, and ending ignominiously.