The old stage coach was rumbling along the dusty road that runs from Maplewood to Riverboro. The day was as warm as midsummer, though it was only the middle of May, and Mr. Jeremiah Cobb was favoring the horses as much as possible, yet never losing sight of the fact that he carried the mail. The hills were many, and the reins lay loosely in his hands as he lolled back in his seat and extended one foot and leg luxuriously over the dashboard. His brimmed hat of worn felt was well pulled over his eyes, and revolved a quid of tobacco in his left cheek.

If you make children happy now, you will make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it.

The world is always a new plaything to children, while to the old it seems falling to pieces from sheer dryness. Everything loses its value with time, but it is not the fault of the fruit, but of the mouth and the tongue.

There are certain narrow, umimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the worst traits in children.

Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.

One cannot see callers, answer the telephone, go to luncheons or dinners, visit the dentist or shoemaker, address charitable organizations in or from a bed; therefore a bed, in my experience, is simply bristling with ideas.

Pictures made in childhood are painted in bright hues.