Don't start with "In the first place..."

I have been meaning to post this quote for quite a while now, for no other reason than I found it amusing. It is from R.M. Ballantyne's novel The Gorilla Hunters;

"And in the first place-"

"O Ralph, I entreat you," interrupted Peterkin, "do not begin with a 'first place.' When men begin a discourse with that, however many intermediate places they may have to roam about and enlarge on, they never have a place of any kind to terminate in, but go skimming along with a couple of dozen 'lastlies,' like a stone thrown over the surface of a pond, which, after the first two or three big and promising bounds, spends itself in an endless succession of twittering ripples, and finally sinks, somehow or nohow, into oblivion."

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I absolutely guarantee that the President wanted a fine, handcrafted American ale. But I am certain that the conservative press would've jumped this as an "elitist" choice as they did his campaign comments on arugula.