The men whom I have seen succeed best in life always have been cheerful and hopeful men; who went about their business with a smile on their faces; and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men; facing rough and smooth alike as it came.

Better is old wine than new, and old friends like-wise.

Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work.

A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults.

Now, to tell my story--if not as it ought to be told, at least as I can tell it,--I must go back sixteen years, to the days when Whitbury boasted of forty coaches per diem, instead of one railway, and set forth how in its southern suburb, there stood two pleasant house side by side, with their gardens sloping down to the Whit, and parted from each other only by the high brick fruit-wall, through which there used to be a door of communication; for the two occupiers were fast friends.

I go at what I have to do as if there were nothing else in the world for me to do.

Life is too short for mean anxieties.