The Professor at the Breakfast-Table

The air of the Old World is good for nothing, he said, one day.--Used up, Sir,--breathed over and over again. You must come to this side, Sir, for an atmosphere fit to breathe n...

No, Sir! when a man calls you names because you go to the ballot-box and vote for your candidate, or because you say this or that is your opinion, he forgets in which half of th...

Wealth, too,--what an endless repetition of the same foolish trivialities about it! Take the single fact of its alleged uncertain tenure and transitory character. In old times,...

The Little Gentleman continued to fail, until it became plain that his remaining days were few. I told the household what to expect. There was a good deal of kind feeling expres...

You may be sure that some men, even among those who have chosen the task of pruning their fellow-creatures, grow more and more thoughtful and truly compassionate in the midst of...

The reader of to-day will not forget, I trust, that it is nearly a quarter of a century since these papers were written. Statements which were true then are not necessarily true...

Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin sent out two fine blood-horses, Barefoot and Serab by name, to Massachusetts, something before the time I am talking of. With them came a Yorkshire groo...

The Roman Catholic Church has certain formulas for its dying children, to which almost all of them attach the greatest importance. There is hardly a criminal so abandoned that h...

Sir,--said he,--it is n't what a man thinks or says; but when and where and to whom he thinks and says it. A man with a flint and steel striking sparks over a wet blanket is one...

Mighty close quarters they were where the young man John bestowed himself and his furniture; this last consisting of a bed, a chair, a bureau, a trunk, and numerous pegs with co...

I confess I did expect to see something that would remind me of the girl's little deformed neighbor, if not portraits of him.--There is a left arm again, though;--no,--that is f...

We were talking about names, one day.--Was there ever anything,--I said,--like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious, detestable appellations,--inventing or fin...

--Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. Does not Mr. Bryan...

After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock measures, --without any warning,--there came a swift change of his features; his face turned white, as the waters whiten...

--A man that knows men, in the street, at their work, human nature in its shirt-sleeves, who makes bargains with deacons, instead of talking over texts with them, a man who has...

But supposing any one do take offence at first sight, let him look over these notes again, and see whether he is quite sure he does not agree with most of these things that were...

It would be a noble sacrifice,--said the Model, and every American woman would be grateful to you. Let us burn them all in a heap out in the yard.

--What is the saddle of a thought? Why, a word, of course.--Twenty years after you have dismissed a thought, it suddenly wedges up to you through the press, as if it had been st...

--I am satisfied, that, as we grow older, we learn to look upon our bodies more and more as a temporary possession and less and less as identified with ourselves. In early years...

A man's mental reactions with the atmosphere of life must go on, whether he will or no, as between his blood and the air he breathes. As to catching the residuum of the process,...

But a willow will grow in baked sand wet with rainwater. An air-plant will grow by feeding on the winds. Nay, those huge forests that overspread great continents have built them...

I LOVE YOU is all the secret that many, nay, most women have to tell. When that is said, they are like China-crackers on the morning of the fifth of July. And just as that littl...

Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in character, impressible, unelastic. But the positive blondes, with the golden tint running through them, are often full of character. Th...