Mark Twain

“ Henry, that's pure nonsense. There isn't anything going to happen to her; just make your mind easy as to that. What did the letter say? Said she was well, didn't it? And said she'd be here by nine o'clock, didn't it? Did you ever know her to fail of her word? Why, you know you never did. Well, then, don't you fret; she'll BE here, and that's absolutely certain, and as sure as you are born. Come, now, let's get to decorating --not much time left."
Pretty soon Tom and Joe arrived, and then all hands set about adoring the house with flowers. ”

“ In one place, where a busy little city with banks and newspapers and fire companies and a mayor and aldermen had been, was nothing but a wide expanse of emerald turf, with not even the faintest sign that human life had ever been present there. ”

“ That was all hard, cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a nest which had aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment. ”

“ In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away. ”

“ We've done it every year for nineteen years. The first Saturday there was twenty-seven of us, without counting the girls; there's only three of us now, and the girls are gone. We drug him to sleep, or he would go wild; then he's all right for another year--thinks she's with him till the last three or four days come round; then he begins to look for her, and gets out his poor old letter, and we come and ask him to read it to us. ”

“ Late Friday afternoon another gray veteran tramped over from his cabin a mile or so away, and said the boys wanted to have a little gaiety and a good time Saturday night, if Henry thought she wouldn't be too tired after her journey to be kept up.
"Tired? She tired! Oh, hear the man! Joe, YOU know she'd sit up six weeks to please any one of you!"
When Joe heard that there was a letter, he asked to have it read, and the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up ”

“ She's gone to see her people. They live forty or fifty miles from here. She's been gone two weeks today."
"When do you expect her back?"
"This is Wednesday. She'll be back Saturday, in the evening --about nine o'clock, likely." ”