Why should Canada, wild and unsettled as it is, impress us as an older country than the States, unless because her institutions are old? All things appeared to contend there, as I have implied, with a certain rust of antiquity, such as forms on old armor and iron guns,--the rust of conventions and formalities. It is said that the metallic roofs of Montreal and Quebec keep sound and bright for forty years in some cases. But if the rust was not on the tinned roofs and spires, it was on the inhabitants and their institutions.

Life in us is like the water in a river.

It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.

A man can suffocate on courtesy.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features.