For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.

If ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the true metal and bear the stamp of heaven.

Its very pulse, if I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle second stroke, as though it would check old Time, and have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush the seconds as they came trooping on, and remorselessly to clear a path before the Day of Judgment.

I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.

It was the momentary yielding of a nature that had been disappointed from the dawn of its perceptions, but had not quite given up all its hopeful yearnings yet.

Home is a word stronger than a magician ever spoke.

He was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset