Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

Let there be worse cotton and better men.

But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation.

I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.

Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.