A sharp brush of fighting; not great in quantity, but laid in at the right moment, in the right place.

Like the prick of a needle, duly sharp, into the spinal marrow of a gigantic object; totally ruinous to such object.

Never, or rarely, in the Annals of War, was as much good got of so little fighting.

You may, with labor and peril, plunge a hundred dirks into your boaconstrictor; hack him with axes, bray him with sledge-hammers; that is not uncommon: but the one true prick in the spinal marrow, and the Artist that can guide you well to that, he and it are the notable and beneficent phenomena.
PRINCE KARL, CUT IN TWO, TUMBLES HOME AGAIN DOUBLE-QUICK.
Next morning, Wednesday, 24th, the Prussians are early astir again; groping, on all manner of roads, to find what Prince Karl is doing, in a world all covered in thick mist.

They can find nothing of him, but broken tumbrils, left baggage-wagons, rumor of universal marching hither and marching thither;--evidences of an Army fallen into universal St.
Vitus's-Dance; distractedly hurrying to and fro, not knowing whitherward for the moment, except that it must be homewards, homewards with velocity.
Prince Karl's farther movements are not worth particularizing.