The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.

A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province.

For things to change, we must change.

If it is the result of a pure love, there can be nothing sensual in marriage. Chastity is something positive, not negative. It isthe virtue of the married especially. All lusts or base pleasures must give place to loftier delights. They who meet as superior beings cannot perform the deeds of inferior ones.

My themes will not be far-fetched. I will tell of homely every-day phenomena and adventures.

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.