I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, ‘May I come in?’ is not true laughter. No! He is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, ‘I am here.

But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one. Men know him not, and to know not is to care not for.

For me, I say no, but then I am old, and life, with his sunshine, his fair places, his song of birds, his music and his love, lie far behind. You others are young. Some have seen sorrow, but there are fair days yet in store. What say you?

I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.

And then away for home! Away to the quickest and nearest train! Away from this cursed land, where the devil and his children stil walk with earthly feet!

It is something like the way dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper root for its causes than we have knowledge of.

A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century.