Mary Martha Sherwood

“ Dymock's tower was the nearest, and the sun was already so low that the old keep with its many mouldering walls, and out-buildings, was seen from the shed, standing in high relief against the golden sky. As the young man entered, looking boldly about him, Shanty asked him what he wanted.
"I want a horse-shoe," he replied.
"A horse-shoe!" returned the blacksmith, "and where's your horse?"
"I has no other horse than Adam's mare," he replied; "I rides no other, but I want a horse-shoe."
"You are a pretty fellow," returned Shanty "to want a horse-shoe, and to have never a horse to wear him." ”

“ Smith; "I did not mean to offend—but there is that little boy trying to explain the bible to his bearer."
"But, surely," said Henry's mamma, "you do not think that I am fifty years of age?—you are mistaken by twenty years."
Mrs. Smith. O! my dear madam, you must excuse my husband. Whenever he is a little angry with me, he tells me that I am getting old. But I am so used to it that I never mind it.
Mr. Smith. Well, my dear; leave me, if you please, to speak for myself. I am not a man that disguises the truth. Whether I speak or not, time runs on, death and eternity approach. ”

“ Why, we are to live in this place, and take care of it, and see that everything is kept in order; every tree, and every bench, and everything you love. How you stare!" added Bessy; "how round your eyes are! I don't mean this hut; did you think I meant that my aunt and I were to live in it, and take care of the benches?"
"The house, the house?" answered Lucy, with a cry of joy; "are you and Mrs. Goodriche to have the house and the garden; and to take care of the poor people, and the school, and the hut, and the arbour, and the benches, and our little room, and the parlour, and the roses? ”

“ Mrs. Margaret lifted up her hands and eyes, and then fetching a deep sigh, "That I should have lived to hear that," she exclaimed; "the last representative of the house of Dymock proposing to work at a blacksmith's forge!"
"And why not? Mrs. Margaret," replied the nephew, "does a gentleman lower himself when he works merely for recreation, and not for sordid pelf; you have heard of Peter the Great?"
"Bless me, nephew," replied the spinster, bridling, "where do you think my ears have been all my life, if I never heard of Peter the Great!" ”

“ Oh, Bessy, Bessy, dear Bessy, now am I glad indeed! and we will come to you here, and you shall come to us there. Oh, Emily, Emily, I am so happy!"
The gentle eyes of Emily sparkled as brightly as Lucy's did, when she heard this news, though she said little; but she whispered to her sister, the next minute: "Now, Lucy, we should not have cried so much, it was not right."
Lucy answered aloud: "No, Emily, we should not; but I hope that we shall cry no more. If the whole world had been picked, we could not have found any people we like so well to live here as Mrs. Goodriche and Bessy." ”

“ Mr. Smith. It is almost dangerous, my dear little boy, for a child like you to dispute with a Heathen: for although you are in the right, and he is in the wrong, yet Satan, who is the father of lies, may put words into his mouth which may puzzle you; so that your faith may be shaken, while his remains unchanged.
Henry. O! sir; must I give up the hope of Boosy's being made a Christian. Poor Boosy! he has taken care of me ever since I was born.
Mr. Smith. But suppose, my dear boy, that I could put you in a better way of converting Boosy: a safe way to yourself, and a better way for him? ”

“ Lucy. "Yes, mamma, I remember it very well; you told me it was envy. But I do not feel envy now; I do not wish to take Miss Augusta's things from her, or to hurt her; Emily and I only wish to be like her, and to have the same things she has."
"What you now feel, my dears," said Mrs. Fairchild, "is not exactly envy, though it is very like it; it is what is called ambition. Ambition is the desire to be greater than we are. Ambition makes people unhappy and discontented with what they are and what they have."
"I do not exactly understand, mamma," said Emily, "what ambition makes people do." ”

“ Neither Dymock nor the young man paid her any regard, or seemed to see her, but Shanty made her welcome, and pointing to a bench which was within the glow of the fire of the forge, though out of harm's way of sparks or strokes, the woman came in, and having with the expertness of long use, slung the child from her back into her arms, she sate down, laying the little one across her knee, whilst the eldest of the two children dropped on the bare earth with which the shed was floored, and began nibbling a huge crust which the mother put into his hand. ”