The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will never know.

Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!

The ocean moans over dead men's bones.

When friends are at your hearthside met, Sweet courtesy has done its most If you have made each guest forget That he himself is not the host.

Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West; the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.

Sorrow itself is not so hard to bear As the thought of sorrow coming. Airy ghosts, That work no harm, do terrify us more Than men in steel with bloody purposes. Death is not dreadful; 'tis the dread of death— We die whene'er we think of it!

What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.