It takes some hours to get a room warm where a family never sits, and which therefore has not in its walls one particle of the genial vitality which comes from the indwelling of human beings.
The turn of the tide.
When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you, till it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that’s just the place and time that the tide ’ll turn.
SAM LAWSON’S STORIES.
Little things.
“Some seem to think the Lord don’t look out only for gret things; but, ye see, little things is kind o’ hinges that gret ones turns on. They say, take care o’ pennies, an’ dollars’ll take care o’ themselves. It’s jest so in everything; and ef the Lord don’t look arter little things, He ain’t so gret as they say, any way.”
LITTLE FOXES.
Sincerity and courtesy.
Truth before all things; sincerity before all things; pure, clean, diamond-bright sincerity is of more value than the gold of Ophir; the foundation of all love must rest here. How those people do who live in the nearest and dearest intimacy with friends who, they believe, will lie to them for any purpose, even the most refined and delicate, is a mystery to me. If I once know that my wife or my friend will tell me only what they think will be agreeable to me, then I am at once lost, my way is a pathless quicksand. But all this being premised, I still say that we Anglo-Saxons might improve our domestic life, if we would graft upon the strong stock of its homely sincerity the courteous grace of the French character.