The Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy. The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause before uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have spared the feelings of him the bearer.

Spite is a little word, but it represents as strange a jumble of feelings and compound of discords, as any polysyllable in the language.

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!

[S]he stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.

We need be careful how we deal with those about us, when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done- of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this, in time.

"There is no deception now, Mr. Weller. Tears," said Job, with a look of momentary slyness, "tears are not the only proofs of distress, nor the best ones."

By the by, who ever knew a man who never read or wrote neither who hadn't got some small back parlour which he would call a study!