They are describing colonel pickering from pygmalion, a play by george bernard shaw.
Hello. You did not enter the text to which this question refers, which makes it impossible for it to be answered accurately. However, I will try to help you in the best possible way.
When a character starts the work talking directly with the reader, we can perceive an affinity effect between narrator and reader, leaving the work more personal and with a more confident effect. The reader, then, begins to be part of the work, as a person who is being confidant of the narrator and receiving all the report first hand.
"Candide" is a book that was written by Voltaire and in this book, Voltaire is satirizing society’s emphasis on lineage when he explained about Candide's mother not marrying his father because his father could "only prove seventy-one quarterings" and this refers to his family tree.
Mines can cause the ground to cave in.
