Thomas Hardy

“ But ’tis on’y an excuse. Watered cider is too common among us.”
“Yes, yes; too common it is!” said Spinks with an inward sigh, whilst his eyes seemed to be looking at the case in an abstract form rather than at the scene before him. “Such poor liquor do make a man’s throat feel very melancholy—and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent.” ”

“ Light streamed through the cracks and joints of outbuildings a little way from the cottage, a sight which nourished a fancy that the purpose of the erection must be rather to veil bright attractions than to shelter unsightly necessaries. ”

“ There, he always was such a clumsy man indoors.”
“Ay, ay; I know you’d tap a hundred beautiful, Ann—I know you would; two hundred, perhaps. But I can’t promise. This is a’ old cask, and the wood’s rotted away about the tap-hole. The husbird of a feller Sam Lawson—that ever I should call’n such, now he’s dead and gone, poor heart!—took me in completely upon the feat of buying this cask. ‘Reub,’ says he—’a always used to call me plain Reub, poor old heart!—‘Reub,’ he said, says he, ‘that there cask, Reub, is as good as new; yes, good as new. ’Tis a wine-hogshead ”