TO preach a sermon or edit a newspaper were the two things in life which I always felt I could do with credit to myself and benefit to the world, if I only had the chance.

Crime, to the man of the forties, was an alien monstrous terror.

... while the light burning within may have been divine, the outer case of the lamp was assuredly cheap enough.

It has happened to me to meet many of the men of my day whom the world agreed to call great.

Nowhere in this country, from sea to sea, does nature comfort us with such assurance of plenty, such rich and tranquil beauty as in those unsung, unpainted hills of Pennsylvania.

The only hero known to my childhood was Henry Clay.

Every child was taught from his cradle that money was Mammon, the chief agent of the flesh and the devil. As he grew up it was his duty as a Christian and a gentleman to appear to despise filthy lucre, whatever his secret opinion of it might be.