The death I should prefer would be to break my neck off the back of a good horse at a full gallop on a fine day.

In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.

The master's irresponsible power has no such bound.

Those that we love never alter, unless we cease to love them.

I have been out again on the river, rowing. I find nothing new.

American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and modest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.

My chief time for reading is at night while brushing my hair before I go to bed, and as you may suppose, but little profit and pleasure can be derived from such mere sips at the well of knowledge. 'Tis a great privation to me, for my desire for information increases instead of diminishing, and I look forward with great anxiety to the time when I can improve my poor neglected mind and learn some of the few exhaustless store of things which I wish to know.