"Corners of silver scrollwork, linked together by bands and clasps of the same metal, adorned its surface, and over the glowing red of its Venetian leather binding, lambs, lions, eagles, doves, and pelicans stood lucently embossed, bearing upon their well-drilled shoulders the sacred emblems and mottoes of the ecclesiastical party."
"I have, for instance, not even mentioned the sea, which swept smoother and smoother in toward the feet of those precipices and grew more and more trans-lucently purple and yellow and green, while half a score of cascades shot straight down their fronts in shafts of snowy foam, and over their pachydermatous shoulders streamed and hung long reaches of gray vines or mosses."
"It was true that the port-hole might most of the time have been wholly ornamental for all the good it did them, for it was generally splashed with grey October sea, but, at least, as Nancy lucently explained, you could see things -- once there had actually been a porpoise -- and that neither of them, in their present condition, would have worried very much about it if their cabin had been an aquarium was a fact beyond dispute."