To certain temperaments, especially when previously agitated by any deep feeling, there is perhaps nothing more exasperating, andwhich sooner explodes all self-command, than the coarse, jeering insolence of a porter, cabman, or hack-driver.

It is-or seems to be-a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally & impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it.

Though essaying but a sportive sail, I was driven from my course by a blast re sistless; and ill-provided, young, and bowed by the brunt of things before my prime, still fly before the gale. ... If after all these fearful fainting trances, the verdict be, the golden haven was not gained; yet in bold quest thereof, better to sink in boundless deeps than float on vulgar shoals; and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do.

Youth is immortal; Tis the elderly only grow old!

You cannot hide the soul.

I would prefer not to.

Passion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a palatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings, among the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is enacted. And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean, are no measure of its power. In the present instance the stage is a scrubbed gun deck, and one of the external provocations a man-of-war's-man's spilled soup.