“ Buddie, however, clung to her former opinion. "I like Sammy Patch the best," said she.
"That," rejoined the singer, "is a matter of taste, as the donkey said to the horse who preferred hay to thistles. Usually the public likes best the very piece the composer himself cares least about. So wherever I go I hear, 'Oh, Professor, do sing us that beautiful song about Sammy Patch.' And I can't poke my head inside the Thistle Club but some donkey bawls out, 'Here's Bray! Now we'll have a song. Sing us Sammy Patch, old fellow.' Really, I've sung that song so many times I'm tired of the sound of it." ”

“ I have pretty good spirits myself, and enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am oppressed and extinguished by these great lusty, noisy creatures, and feel as if I were a mute at a funeral when they get into full blast.
I can not get along much better with those drooping, languid people, whose vitality falls short as much as that of the others is in excess. I have not life enough for two ”

“ The hoe is an ingenious instrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a great disadvantage.
The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He burrows in the ground so that you can not find him, and he flies away so that you can not catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to the ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself. ”

“ At one end of the room where the weppins is kept, is a wax figger of Queen Elizabeth, mounted on a fiery stuffed hoss, whose glass eye flashes with pride, and whose red morocker nostril dilates hawtily, as if conscious of the royal burden he bears. I have associated Elizabeth with the Spanish Armady. She's mixed up with it at the Surrey Theater, where Troo to the Core is bein acted, and in which a full bally core is introjooced on board the Spanish Admiral's ship, giving the audiens the idee that he intends openin a moosic-hall in Plymouth the moment he conkers that town. ”

“ Buddie shrank another inch or two. "I'm a great traveler myself. All donkeys travel that can. If a donkey travels, you know, he may come home a horse; and to become a horse is, of course, the ambition of every donkey!" ”

“ If virtue consists in deadening the nervous system to all pleasurable influences, why, you may just mark my name off the list. There was old man Haskill. I sat up with him the night after he died, and one of the men with me was harping upon the great life the old fellow had lived—never chewed, never smoked, never was drunk, never gambled, never did anything except to stand still and be virtuous—and I couldn't help but feel that he had lost nothing by dying. ”

“ But I could think of only two ways to dispose of the beast. I could either swallow him where he stood and then sit down on him, or I could crawl inside of him and kick him to death.
But I was saved either of these expedients by his coming towards me so abruptly that I dropped the rope in terror, and then he turned about, and, kicking me full of mud, shot for the gate, ripping the clothes-line in two, and went on down the street at a horrible gallop, with two of Mrs. Perkins' garments, which he hastily snatched from the line, floating over his neck in a very picturesque manner. ”

“ It's all I can do to hold up my head."
"Oh, excuse me," said Buddie, untying the sign, Old Saws Reset While You Wait.
"Hang it round your own neck," said the Donkey, and Buddie did so.
"I often wonder," she said, "whether a horse doesn't sometimes get tired holding his head out at the end of his neck. And as for a giraffe, I don't see how he stands it."
"Well, a giraffe's neck runs out at a more convenient angle," said the Donkey. "Still, it is tiresome without a check-rein. You hear a great deal about a check-rein being a cruel invention, but, on the contrary, it's a great blessing. ”

“ Assuredly the Honorable Timothy had a well-developed sense of humor.
"His English is certainly dreadful," remarked the voice of authority, and it was not an English voice, nor is O'Shea distinctively an English name. "Dreadful. And, by the way, I hope you are not spoiling these youngsters. You must remember that you are fitting them for the battle of life. Don't coddle your soldiers. Can you reconcile your present attitude with discipline?"
"With Morris—yes," Teacher answered. "He is gentle and tractable beyond words." ”

“ She appeared to be very much interested in the proceedings; but the instant that the mud flew, she disappeared from the window, and a moment later she appeared on the stoop with a long poker in her hand, and fire enough in her eye to heat it red-hot.
Just then Stiver's horse stood up on his hind legs and tried to hug me with the others. This scared me. A horse never shows his strength to such advantage as when he is coming down on you like a frantic pile-driver. ”

“ Teacher continued, "that it might be better not to press the point."
"Oh, if you have no control over him—" Mr. O'Shea was beginning pleasantly, when the Principal suggested:
"You'd better let us hear what he has to say, Miss Bailey; make him understand that you are master here." And Teacher, with a heart-sick laugh at the irony of this advice in the presence of the Associate Superintendent, turned to obey.
But Morris would utter no words but these, dozens of times repeated: "I have a fraid." Miss Bailey coaxed, bribed, threatened and cajoled; shook him surreptitiously, petted him openly. ”

“ It remained a simple ball of red twine and I told Perkins so.
"The difference," declared Perkins, "between mediocrity and genius! Mediocrity always sees red twine; genius sees a ball of Crimson Cord!" ”

“ O'Shea's countenance, the loyal heart of Morris interpreted it as a new menace to his sovereign. No later than yesterday she had warned them of the vital importance of coherence. "Every one knows," she had said, "that only common little boys and girls come apart. No one ever likes them," and the big stranger was even now misjudging her.
Again his short arm agitated the quiet air. Again his trembling legs upheld a trembling boy. Again authority urged. Again Teacher asked:
"Well, Morris, what is it, dear?" ”

“ He bore an unfolded note and, as Teacher had no hand to spare, the boy placed the paper on the desk under the softening eyes of the Honorable Timothy, who glanced down idly and then pounced upon the note and read its every word.
"For you, Miss Bailey," he said in the voice before which even the school janitor had been known to quail. "Your friend was thoughtful, though a little late." And poor palpitating Miss Bailey read:
"Watch out! 'Gum Shoe Tim' is in the building. The Principal caught him on the back-stairs, and they're going round together. He's as cross as a bear. ”

“ Rapid; for how should anything dead speak out so as to be understood? And indeed, does not his definition suit the vexed feelings of some young gentlemen attempting to read Latin without any interlinear translation? and who inwardly, cursing both book and teacher, blast their souls "if they can make any sense out of it." The ancients may yet speak in their own languages to a few; but to most who boast the honor of their acquaintance, they are certainly dead in the sense of Solomon Rapid. ”

“ If ever a man was diligent in business it was me. I took him so hard and so fast in the eyes with my fists, and in his bred basket with my knees, that he didn't hav a chance to see or to breathe, and he was the worst whipped man in two minets I ever seed in my life. When he hollered I helped him up and breshed the dirt off his clothes, and he was as umble as a ded nigger and as sober as a Presbyterian preacher. ”

“ The bell tinkled and the entertainment began. One after another the Jokes and Conundrums heard their cues, went on, and returned to the dressing-room, for they all had to go on again in the after-piece. The house was crowded to the dome, and there was scarcely a dry eye in the vast audience as one after another of the old Quips and Jests that had been treasured household words in many a family came on and then disappeared to make room for others of their kind.
As the evening wore on the whisper ran through the theater that the Old Gag was going on that night—perhaps for the last time ”

“ The weeds, on the other hand, have hateful moral qualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a moral action. I feel as if I were destroying a sin. My hoe becomes an instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of nature. This view of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. ”

“ All he needs, you see, Mary, is a teacher who doesn't lose patience with him the first time he makes a mistake. Now, Rollo, how do you spell, B-a-n—Ban?"
Rollo started out timidly on c-a—then changed to d-o,—and finally compromised on h-e-n.
Mr. Holiday made a pass at him with Volume I, but Rollo saw it coming and got out of the way.
"B-a-n!" his father shouted, "B-a-n, Ban! Ban! Ban! Ban! Ban! Now go on, if you think you know how to spell that! What comes next? Oh, you're enough to tire the patience of Job! ”

“ Lying high up under the wing of the Blue Hills, and in the odorous breath of pines and cedars, it chances to be the most enchanting bit of unlaced disheveled country within fifty miles of Boston, which, moreover, can be reached in half an hour's ride by railway. ”

“ Make your own geography—everybody else does. There's a million islands out there of one kind or another, and as defenseless as a two weeks' old infant. If you want a real one, fish it out and fire ahead. If you don't, make one up for yourself and call it 'The Isle of Piccolo,' or something of that sort. After you've got your chorus going, introduce your villain, who should be a man with a deep bass voice and a piratical past. ”

“ O'Shea, who, in addition to his unexpectedness, was adorned by an abominable temper, an overbearing manner, and a sense of cruel humor. He had almost finished his examinations at the nearest school where, during a brisk campaign of eight days, he had caused five dismissals, nine cases of nervous exhaustion, and an epidemic of hysteria.
Day by day nerves grew more tense, tempers more unsure, sleep and appetite more fugitive. Experienced [Pg 490] teachers went stolidly on with the ordinary routine, while beginners devoted time and energy to the more spectacular portions of the curriculum. ”

“ If there was anything Elizabeth Eliza had a terror of it was a June-bug. She had heard that they had a tend [Pg 457] ency to get into the hair. One had been caught in the hair of a friend of hers, who had long, luxuriant hair. But the legs of the June-bug were caught in it like fishhooks, and it had to be cut out, and the June-bug was only extricated by sacrificing large masses of the flowing locks. ”

“ Peterkin, as a guest, sat in the front row.
This was her paper, as Elizabeth Eliza read it, for she frequently inserted fresh expressions:—
THE SUN
It is impossible that much can be known about it. This is why we have taken it up as a subject. We mean the sun that lights us by day and leaves us by night. In the first place, it is so far off. No measuring-tapes could reach it; and both the earth and the sun are moving about us, that it would be difficult to adjust ladders to reach it, if we could. ”

“ The novel is easy. Anything will do. I'm no literary man. I don't read a book in a year. You get the novel."
"But I don't read a book in five years!" I exclaimed. "I don't know anything about books. I don't know where to get a novel."
"Advertise!" he exclaimed. "Advertise! You can get anything, from an apron to an ancestor, if you advertise for it. Offer a prize—offer a thousand dollars for the best novel. There must be thousands of novels not in use."
Perkins was right. ”

“ The Honorable Tim crossed over to Miss Bailey's side and steadied himself for a great effort.
"Teacher," he began meekly, "I tells you 'scuse. This sort of thing makes a man feel like a bull in a china shop. Do you think the little fellow will shake hands with me? I was really only joking."
"But surely he will," said Miss Bailey, as she glanced down at the tangle of dark curls resting against her breast. "Morris, dear, aren't you going to say good-by to the gentleman?"
Morris relaxed one hand from its grasp on his lady and bestowed it on Mr. O'Shea. ”

“ Along the Old Bay Road, a highway even in the Colonial days, there are a number of attractive villas and cottages straggling off toward Milton, which are occupied for the summer by people from the city. These birds of passage are a distinct class from the permanent inhabitants, and the two seldom closely assimilate unless there has been some previous connection. It seemed to me that our new neighbors were to come under the head of permanent inhabitants; they had built their own house, and had the air of intending to live in it all the year round. ”