'It's unlikely that I should ever have got more than two hundred pounds for a book; and, to have kept at my best, I must have been content to publish once every two or three years. The position was untenable with no private income. And I must needs marry a wife of dainty instincts! What astounding impudence! No wonder Fate pitched me aside into the gutter.'英文原著 · 《New Grub Street》
It is one of those places God must have meant for a field from all time, lying very level at the foot of the slope that crowds up against Kearsarge, falling slightly toward the town. North and south it is fenced by low old glacial ridges, boulder strewn and untenable. Eastward it butts on orchard closes and the village gardens, brimming over into them by wild brier and creeping grass. The village street, with its double row of unlike houses, breaks off abruptly at the edge of the field in a footpath that goes up the streamside, beyond it, to the source of waters.英文原著 · 《The Land of Little Rain》
One thing is remarkable -- that, after some years, the old holes are forsaken and new ones bored; perhaps because the old habitations grow foul and fetid from long use, or because they may so abound with fleas as to become untenable. This species of swallow moreover is strangely annoyed with fleas: and we have seen fleas, bed-fleas (pulex irritans), swarming at the mouths of these holes, like bees upon the stools of their hives.英文原著 · 《The Natural History of Selborne》
In the original description this species was confounded with C. grahami, with which it grows and which it much resembles; and this, together with the fact that 4 central hooked spines are seldom found, induced Dr. Engelmann (Syn. 262) to propose the more appropriate but untenable name M. phellosperma. The resemblance to C. grahami is not so close as general appearance would indicate, as the more oblong or cylindrical form, longer and less crowded tubercles, more numerous spines, often more than one hooked central, large seeds, and remarkable seed appendages serve well to distinguish it.英文原著 · 《The North American Species of》