Why, I would stave him on the open street like a puncheon of eight, and think nothing of the doing of it.
Michael Texel, indeed! But I am forgetting.

My business at this time was to make love to Katrin, so that I might banish the ill impression which Helene had formed concerning that pleasant, harmless little Christian's Elsa over there.

I never heard anything so foolish in my life.

But, then, what women will think and say passes the imagination of man.
Michael Texel indeed! The thought of that young man of beef and beer recurred so persistently and forcibly to me that for a time I could scarce command myself to speak civilly to his sister.

Though, of course, she was quite different, being a woman, and informed with such a quick and dainty spirit that at times it seemed as it had been imprisoned in her too massive frame and held "in subjection to the flesh," as the clerics say.