One sees that dead, vacant look steal over the rarest, finest of women's faces . . . in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces . . .

The only hero known to my childhood was Henry Clay.

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

Men and women thought and did noble and mean things that would have been impossible to them before or after. A man cannot drink old Bourbon long and remain in his normal condition. We did not drink Bourbon, but blood.

We have grown used to money. The handling, the increase of it, is the chief business of life now with most of us.

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.

For, after all, put it as we may to ourselves, we are all of us from birth to death guests at a table which we did not spread.