Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.

I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

All knives and forks were working away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost, in self defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast-time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of nature.

And the voices in the waves are always whispering to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love - of love, eternal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible country far away!

And it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.

The cold hoarfrost glistened on the tombstones, and sparkled like rows of gems, among the stone carvings of the old church. The snow lay hard and crisp upon the ground; and spread over the thickly-strewn mounds of earth, so white and smooth a cover, that it seemed as if corpses lay there, hidden only by their winding sheets.

"You see," said Mr. Toots, "what I wanted in a wife was - in short, was sense. Money, Feeder, I had. Sense I - I had not, particularly."