hes, blue
stocking, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their
brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps,
long-waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors
and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the
outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their
mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or
perhaps a white frock gave symptoms of city innovation. The
sons, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous
brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the
fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an
eelskin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the
country as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the
hair."[32]

"The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to
take issue in the great points of the question. They content
themselves with exposing some of _the crimes and follies_ to
which public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail
the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless
violence of the army. They laugh at the scriptural names of
the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts;
soldiers reveling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry;
upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession
of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old
gentry; boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals;
Quakers riding naked through the market-place;
Fifth-monarchy men shouting for King Jesus; agitators
lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag,--all
these, they tell us, were the offspring of the great
Rebellion."[33]

In narration and in a short paragraph of description this paragraph of
details is frequently without a topic-sentence. The circumstances that
make up a transaction are grouped, but there is no need of writing, "I
will now detail this." In the following, since the paragraph is
plainly about the preparation for the fight, it is unnecessary to say
so. Such a patent statement would hinder the movement of the story.

"Alan drew a dirk, which he held in his left hand in case
they should run in under his sword. I, on my part, clambered
up into the berth with an armful of pistols and something of
a heavy heart, and set open the window where I was to watch.
It was a small part of the deck that I could o