This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.

The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.

the tea-hour is the hour of peace ... strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle - a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat.

The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp.

real letter-writing ... is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.

History is not written in the interests of morality.

The soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.