"What is your best, your very best, ale a glass?" "Two pence halfpenny," says the landlord, "is the price of the Genuine Stunning Ale." "Then," says I, producing the money, "just draw me a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head on it."

I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas.

. . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker . . .

If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.

I was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am - what shall I say I am today?

My imagination would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention