“It is immoral that a mattress should have so much power. Triumph of that which yields over that which strikes with lightning. But never mind, glory to the mattress which annuls a cannon!”

“After which, he visited the wife of that fool Wallace and spent midnight till dawn bouncing her from one end of the mattress to the other.”

“Alas! They were so young, so beautiful, so lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour was that in which the heart is always full, annd, having o'er itself no further power, prompts deeds eternity can not annul.”

“Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”

“If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it.”

“Then they, too, lay down on mattresses stuffed with straw, hearing the music of the flies to buzz them to sleep, holding each other's hands as they dozed, thinking of the miracles by which love works its will in the world.”