“Then the ship gave sudden lurches that made it a matter of uncertainty whether one was going to put his fork in his mouth or into his eye.”

“It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight.”

“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!”

“So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane.”

“And who are you?" cried one agape, Shuddering in the gloaming light. "I know not" said the second Shape, "I only died last night.”

“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.”

“We visit...a neighboring grave-yard. I am by this time in a condition of mind to become a willing inmate of the place.”