Sabine Baring-Gould

“ Yon see, sir, we have but just come into your house, and already, last night, Jamie was tempted to disobey me, and take what I thought unadvisable, so—I have been turning it over and over in my head—I thought I would like to come to a clear understanding with you, Mr. Menaida. It seems ungracious in me, but you must pity me. I have now all responsibility for Jamie on my head, and I have to do what my conscience tells me I should do ”

“ Menaida, and ran through the opening in the wall, and returned in another moment with the portrait, and gave it into Judith's hands.
"A fine fellow is Oliver! Look at his nose how straight it is. Not like mine—that is a pump-handle. He got his good looks from his mother, not from me. Ah!" He reseated himself at the piano, and ran—incorrectly—over a scale. "It is all the pleasure I have in life, to think of my boy, and to look at his picture, and read his letters, and drink the port he sends me first-rate stuff. ”

“ It was a danger Judith must guard against, lest this trick should be picked up by the childish Jamie, always apt to imitate what he should not, and acquire habits easily gained, hardly broken, that were harmful to himself. Uncle Zachie, in his good-nature, would lead the boy after him into the same habits that marred his own life. ”

“ She asked herself whether she had not acted wrongly when she acted inconsiderately, whether in her precipitation to protect herself she had not misjudged Coppinger, whether, if he had attempted to strike her, it would not have been a lesser evil to receive the blow, than to ward it off in such a manner as to break his bones. Knowing by report the character of the man, she feared that she had incurred his deadly animosity. He could not, that she could see, hurt herself in the execution of his resentment, but he might turn her aunt out of his house. That she had affronted her aunt she was aware ”

“ Where the life? You must play with the spirit and play with the standing also, as you must read with the spirit and read with the understanding also. It is the same thing with bird-stuffing. Any fool can ram tow into a skin and thrust wires into the neck, but what is the result? You must stuff birds with the spirit and stuff with the understanding also—or it is naught. ”

“ And pray, how in the name of wonder did you do that? Upon my word, you will deserve the thanks of the Preventive men. They have no love for him; they have old scores they would gladly wipe off with a broken arm, or, better still, a cracked skull. ”