Some medical beast had revived tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence.

"It's nothing," returned Mrs Chick. "It's merely change of weather. We must expect change."

There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner.

"Well," said my aunt, "this is his boy - his son. He would be as like his father as it's possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too."

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues - faith and hope.

Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.

... as lonesome as a kitten in a wash-house copper with the lid on.