“What a Babel of voices it was, everybody directing everybody else, and everybody doing everything wrong!”

“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.”

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

“What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.”

“Whenever a new scholar came to out school, I used to confront him at recess with the following words: 'My name's Tom Bailey: what's your name?' If the name struck me favorably, I shook hands with the new pupil cordially; but if it didn't I would turn on my heel, for I was particular in this point. Such names as Higgins, Wiggins, and Spriggins were deadly afronts to my ear; while Lapgdon, Wallace, Blake, and the like, were passing words to my confidence and esteem.”

“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.”

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