Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.

When all is said and done, the one sole condition that makes spiritual happiness and preserves it is the absence of doubt.

For a male person bric-a-brac hunting is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes.

Sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get achance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see papa when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.

I knew a man who grabbed a cat by the tail and learned forty percent more about cats than the man who didn't.