“Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.”

“I remember one incident which bears upon this part of the treatise. The gentleman who gave it to me had asked to see my tobacco-pipe; he examined it carefully, and when he came to the little protuberance at the bottom of the bowl he seemed much delighted, and exclaimed that it must be rudimentary. I asked him what he meant."Sir," he answered, "this organ is identical with the rim at the bottom of a cup; it is but another form of the same function. Its purposes must have been to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the table upon which it rested. You would find, if you were to look up the history of tobacco-pipes, that in early specimens this protuberance was of a different shape to what it is now. It will have been broad at the bottom, and flat, so that while the pipe was being smoked the bowl might rest upon the table without marking it. Use and disuse must have come into play and reduced the function its present rudimentary condition. I should not be surprised, sir," he continued, "if, in the course of time, it were to become modified still farther, and to assume the form of an ornamental leaf or scroll, or even a butterfly, while in some cases, it will become extinct.”

“It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.”

“Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”

“Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.”

“They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?”

“There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.”