At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare

Notwithstanding all this furniture, there was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat in, at least with entire security to the cat.

The community is eminently Portuguese—that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy.

I would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law provides no adequate punishment for it, they make him Consul General to Tangier.

A devout lady who died, left money and contracted for unlimited masses for the repose of her soul, and also stipulated that this lamp should be kept lighted always, day and night. She did all this before she died, you understand. It is a very small lamp and a very dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I think, if it went out altogether.

It was the aurora borealis of the frozen pole exiled to a summer land!

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.

In that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick, stony coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only lived before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. It may be true—it looks reasonable enough—but as long as those parties can't vote anymore, the matter can be of no great public interest.