Reserve is made sometimes of chain-mail, sometimes of solid plate steel. One is as good armor as the other, though not so obvious.
Some people wear out everything quickly and naturally,—clothes, acquaintanceship, books, pleasures, even dear life itself.
I am delighted at Lowell's saying that our modern terms, "the deuce" and "Old Scratch," were evidently derived from dus and scrat, hairy wood-demons among the Celts and Teutons.
The best of everything is the only individual of that thing. We should ignore the rest.