My luck at the gambling table was varied; sometimes I was fifty to a hundred dollars ahead, and at other times I had to borrow money from my fellow workmen to settle my room rent and pay for my meals.

My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.

She was my first love, and I loved her as only a boy loves.

Young man, young man, your arm's too short to box with God.

My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage

As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.

I had enjoyed life in Paris, and, taking all things into consideration, enjoyed it wholesomely.