I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer.

. . . I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days. . . .

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

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,--for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.

So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources.

Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.