“Consarn it, how a buss will crack of a still frosty night! Mrs. Jones was about half-way between asleep and awake.

“‘There goes my yeast-bottle,’ says she to herself, ‘bust into twenty hundred pieces, and my bread is all dough again.’”

In “The Tour of Dr. Syntax,” Combe gives us the following amusing passages:

Squire. This, Doctor Syntax, is my sister;

Why, my good sir, you have not kissed her.

Syntax. Do not suppose I’m such a brute

As to disdain the sweet salute.

Squire. And this, sir, is my loving wife,

The joy and honor of my life.