The old lady turned around to him and said:
“Well, sir, you are no gentleman; that’s a fact.”
An old doctor examined his patient one afternoon and coldly said to him:
“You are dying, sir; have you any wish to express before you pass over the river?”
“Yes,” said the patient, feebly, “I wish I had employed another doctor.”
The world loves us if we succeed; it despises us if we fail; it piles ice around its benefactors, and gives the meed of praise to genius only when genius is in the grave. But what do words of praise avail to lift the shadows from a path no longer pressed by weary feet? Why fill the hands of the dead with flowers which you have withheld from the living? Who would not rather have one smile, one tender word to-day, than to know that a million roses would be heaped upon his coffin? Who would not rather live and dream among the flowers of love than to sleep the dreamless sleep beneath a wilderness of flowers?
Then why not let the Gulf Stream of love flow on? For its warm current breathes upon the icy shores of mortal life and makes them blossom with laughter and song. Love is the soul of the beautiful, the true and the good; it is all there is of happiness.