Two days overdue, THE WORLD'S WORK has not reached me. Pray make a note of this. I would rather not have to resort to violence.

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore, in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

A half-educated physician is not valuable. He thinks he can cure everything.

To place man properly at the present time, he stands somewhere between the angels and the French.

You can't throw too much style into a miracle.

If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.

To one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its turn, seems the loveliest.