Inconspicuosity

But after a time they found them inconvenient for their daily work and pastimes, which consisted principally of the laying of ambushes for the cutting of each other’s throats, or worse, and the hunting of the red-deer; both which things requiring secrecy and inconspicuosity, these bright and gaudy colours bewrayed them to their enemies and their game.

We see that graceful figure—always perfect, whether in the slashed doublet of Shakespeare, the laces of the Cavalier era, the scarlet and gold uniform of a soldier, or the stern inconspicuosity of the habit of the contemporary gentleman—as we read these pages of simple narration.

The news of the death of Fanny Kemble came as a great surprise to a host of persons, so many had supposed her long since dead. It is somewhat remarkable that a woman who in her time filled so large a place in the public eye should fall into such inconspicuosity that her very existence is lost sight of.

The last village entered and devastated by the old-furniture hunter was Hop Meadow Village. This was partly on account of its inaccessibility—though that would have been a spur to some hunters; and partly to the very primitive manner of life of the surrounding region, which yielded nothing worth gathering for the adornment of city homes; and partly to its inconspicuosity—to apply a long word to a small matter—for it is marked on no map of the State, is twenty-seven miles from a railroad, and, in fact, gets mail but thrice a week, when Aaron Damon, the Tax Collector, drives his buckboard ten miles over the hills to Bountiful, which has a daily stage from Charter Oak, on the railway.

And Man thinks that his part in all this unthinkably vast Cosmos is important!! Why, you poor shrimp! if this old World wants to twitch just a bit and knock down a city or two, or split up a group of mountains, Man, with all his brain capacity, can only dash wildly about, dodging falling bricks. No. You wouldn’t show up from that balloon as plainly as an ant, in crawling around our Capitol building at Washington. But why all this talk about our own inconspicuosity? It is simply brought up to accompany Nancy’s thoughts as that train shot across country; for Nancy, until now, had not known anything approaching such a trip.

The convict is always in a hurry—one created by himself—and quite oblivious of the fact that he is rushing in circles. Environmental sameness invests every action with special significance, brevity and uncertainty of friendly contacts makes for infinite planning and replanning of what to do and say in any particular instant, how to bring that instant about, how to preserve inconspicuosity during it…

They were taking inconspicuosity seriously. That ruled out most of the taverns on the Morpork side of the river, where they were very well known.