It is curious and we magicians collect curiosities, you know.

Well, Henry, you can cease frowning at me. If I am a magician, I am a very indifferent one. Other adepts summon up fairy-spirits and long-dead kings. I appear to have conjured the spirit of a banker.

It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.

To be more precise it was the color of heartache.

Unfortunately, Childermass's French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch.

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.

This is a very grave matter, punishable by...well, I do not exactly know what, but something rather severe, I should imagine.