In most books, the I, of first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.

You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.

Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.

We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.