"As a rule, a man can't cultivate his mustache and his talents impartially."
"As happy as a kind-hearted old lady with a funeral to go to."
"No men are so fussy about what they eat as those who think their brains the biggest part of them."
"The professor's sister, a homeless widow, of excellent Vermont intentions and high ideals in cup-cake."
And this longer extract has the same characteristics:
"You know how it is with people, Avis; some take to zoölogy, and some take to religion. That's the way it is with places. It may be the Lancers, and it may be prayer-meetings. Once I went to see my grandmother in the country, and everybody had a candy-pull; there were twenty-five candy-pulls and taffy-bakes in that town that winter. John Rose says, in the Connecticut Valley, where he came from, it was missionary barrels; and I heard of a place where it was cold coffee. In Harmouth it's improving your mind. And so," added Coy, "we run to reading-clubs, and we all go fierce, winter after winter, to see who'll get the 'severest.' There's a set outside of the faculty that descends to charades and music and inconceivably low intellectual depths; and some of our girls sneak off and get in there once in a while, like the little girl that wanted to go from heaven to hell to play Saturday afternoons, just as you and I used to do, Avis, when we dared. But I find I've got too old for that," said Coy, sadly. "When you're fairly past the college-boys, and as far along as the law students—"
"Or the theologues?" interposed Avis.
"Yes, or the theologues, or even the medical department; then there positively is nothing for it but to improve your mind."
Listen to Lavinia, one of Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke's sensible Yankee women:
"Land! if you want to know folks, just hire out to 'em. They take their wigs off afore the help, so to speak, seemingly."