Kim (Illustrated edition)

Patrice had come to think that humans treated the concept of God, or Gizhe Manidoo, or the Holy Ghost, in a childish way. She was pretty sure that the rules and trappings of ritual had nothing to do with God, that they were ways for people to imagine they were doing things right in order to escape from punishment, or harm, like children.

to swear, though, at his men, they said; but somehow he got an inordinate quantity

Everybody knew it had been the soldiers, that it had been a statement by them to teach us, the natives, a lesson, to announce they could deal with our dogs, could overcome our dogs barking and snarling and warning renouncers of their presence. Our dogs though, had never been just about that.

Note: * If Mr. Harbison had owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of him as “Harbison’s Bull,” but a son or a dog of that name was “Bull Harbison.