“ A strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstances beget here, in the New World, upon the old Puritan stock, and the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such niggard-geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron enthusiasm, such unwilling-humour, such close-fisted generosity. This new ‘Græculus esuriens’ will make a living out of anything. He will invent new trades as well as new tools. His brain is his capital, and he will get education at all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez, and he will make a spelling-book first, and a salt-pan afterwards. ”

“ Every day shows us the same principle of change at work, and no one has more reason to reflect and mourn about it than one Dilly Jones of this city. Dilly is not, perhaps, precisely the person who would be chronicled by the memoir writers of the time, or have a monument erected to him if he were no more; but Dilly is a man of a useful though humble vocation, and no one can saw hickory with more classic elegance, or sit upon the curbstone and take his dinner with more picturesque effect. ”

“ Sorry I am to record the frailties of two such reputable personages, who looked upon themselves as burning and shining lights in our community; but I am afraid that the fact cannot be concealed, that the petty bickerings which arose between them on these little matters of filthy lucre were suffered to intrude within the walls of the sanctuary, and stir up the flame of discord in the great psalm-singing feud; whereby, as our neighbour Hopper Paul sagely remarked, the world may learn wisdom, and lay it down as a maxim, that church affairs can never thrive when the deacons are grocers. ”

“ Powder and gun-flints! must we give up what is clearly proved by many of our great men—and though not set down in Webster’s Spelling Book—to belong to us? will any man, who has pure American blood coursing through his veins, say let it go, ’cause we’re afraid to fight? ”

“ The last words of the old man to his son were:
“Peter, Peter, my son, always be honest, never forgit your ole daddy, and allers bewar of them Gimblit fellers, down to Augusty.”
Reader! every tale has its moral, nor is ours without one. Not only did Peter learn from his adventure in Augusta, the evils of betting, but ever since the time to which we have alluded, he always allows his factor to sell his cotton for him. ”

“ They stopped about four feet apart, and looked each other full in the face for about half a minute, during all which time, Toby sucked his teeth, winked, and made signs with his shoulders and elbows to the by-standers that he knew Hardy was drunk, and was going to quiz him for their amusement. In the meantime, Hardy looked at Tobias, like a polite man dropping to sleep in spite of himself under a dull long story. ”

“ I’ve left my grandmother, father, wife, three children, six cows, two hosses, eighteen sheep, a gross of turkeys, geese, hens, chickens, a black dog, and a grey cat, who fondly look for my return, and I wish to know, without the shadow of a doubt, whether we are to be protected, or not, by this government, or are we tew be trampled under the iron hoofs of Europe’s roaring Bull. We are strong and true at heart for our country, but we are as yet too few in number to offer just resistance. ”

“ The young lawyers, and young M.D.’s, as often as they were in the colonel’s company, introduced the subject of the expected fight. On such occasions, the colonel spoke carelessly and banteringly. Some good old ladies spoke deprecatingly, in the general and in the particular, that so good and clever a young man as Colonel Dick should set so bad an example; and the young ladies, and little misses, bless their dear little innocent souls, they only consulted their own kind hearts, and were satisfied that he must be a wicked and bad man that Colonel Jones would fight. ”

“ Yes, the whistle of the engine will echo through the South-west Pass, and sharply hint to the free people of that great territory the approach of hundreds and thousands tew, who are to be their neighbours. No, Sir, the time is not far distant, when our commerce with China will equal that of all the world; when the Pacific Ocean will be crossed with as much ease as the Frog pond on Boston Common. ”

“ Citizens and fellers; on the bloody ground on which our fathers catawampously poured out their claret free as ile, to enrich the soil over which we now honour and watch with hyena eyes, let the catamount of the inner varmint loose and prepare the engines of vengeance, for the long looked-for day has come. ”

“ I am posed to abolition and free niggers, to the morus multicaulis and the Florida war, and all manner of shecoonery whatsumever! If I’s leeted your respectable representation, I shall go in for good munny, twenty cents for cotton, and no taxes, and shall go for bolishin’ prisonment for debt and the Central Bank. I hope you’ll all cum up to the poles of the lection, and vote like a patriot for your very humble servant—Amen.”
Then he jumped down and went round shakin’ hands. “Hurra for Ben Ansley! Ansley for ever!” shouted every feller. ”

“ The eye travels over the diversity of shape and size without fatigue, and renews its strength by turning from one figure to another, when, at each remove, it is sure to find a difference. Satiated with gazing at rotundity, it is refreshed by a glance at lathiness: and, tired with stooping to the lowly, it can mount like a bird to the aspiring head which tops a maypole. ”

“ I’m always tumbling over wheelbarrows, dogs, and children, because, if I look down, I’m certain to knock my noddle against something above. It’s a complete nuisance to be so tall. Beds are too short; if you go to a tea-fight, the people are always tumbling over your trotters, and breaking their noses, which is what young ladies ain’t partial to; and if you tipple too much toddy of a slippery night—about as easy a thing to do as you’d wish to try—you’re sure to get a hyst a square long—just such a one as I’ve had. ”

“ I quickened my gait, and had come nearly opposite to the thick grove whence the noise proceeded, when my eye caught indistinctly and at intervals, through the foliage of the dwarf oaks and hickories which intervened, glimpses of a man or men who seemed to be in a violent struggle, and I could occasionally catch those deep-drawn emphatic oaths which men in conflict utter when they deal blows. ”

“ The congregation were rapt into ecstasies, and thought they had never heard music till then. It was a most brilliant triumph for us; every voice, as we thought, though of course the malcontents must be excepted, struck in with us, and swelled the loud peal till the walls rung again. ”

“ So I rubbed down the old mare, and put her in the fills. Ah! Sir! that critter knows as much as an Injun, and more than a Nigger. She’s as sober as a judge when she gets the shop—that’s what I call the hearse—behind her. You would not think she was a three-minute nag, to look at her. Well, Sir, as luck would have it, by a sort of providential inspiration, the day before, I’d took off the old wooden springs and set the body on elliptics. For I thought it a hard case that a gentleman who’d been riding easy all his life, should go to his grave on wooden springs. Ah! I deal well by my customers. ”

“ His enthusiasm seems to disappear with the sun, and neither the moon nor the stars can cause high tide in the river of his mind. The current of his good spirits shrinks in its channel, leaving the gay and gorgeous barques of hope and confidence drearily ashore on the muddy flats; and his heart fails him as if it were useless longer to struggle against adversity. ”

“ One night is pretty much like another night in the dark; but it’s a great advantage to a good-looking evening, if the lamps are lit, so you can twig the stars and the moonshine. The fact is, that in this ’ere city, we do grow the blackest moons, and the hardest moons to find, I ever did see. Sometimes I’m most disposed to send the bellman after ’em—or get a full-blooded pinter to pint ’em out, while I hold a candle to see which way he pints. ”

“ As they approached Augusta, his wrath seemed to increase, and he vented his spleen on his old mare and Bob.
“Bob,” said he, “you dad-dratted rascal, why don’t you drive up? you don’t do nothin’ but set thar and sleep.
“Take that, and that, and that,” he would say to his mare, accompanying each word with a blow; “git up, Miss, and go long to Augusty.”
When they had come in sight of Augusta, Bob struck a camp, and his master rode on into town. Having eaten his supper, and put up his horse, he retired for the night, and early in the morning started out to look for Jonathan Barker. ”

“ The process of coinage has been far more rapid and extensive in America than in Europe. That of words predominates in the Western, and that of phrases in the Eastern States. The chief peculiarity in the pronunciation of the Southern and Western people, is the giving of a broader sound than is proper to certain vowels; as whar for where, thar for there, bar for bear. ”

“ In order that the world may not remain in darkness as to his doings in this last behalf, and fearing lest there may be no one who entertains for him that particularly warm regard which animates us towards him, we have thought it incumbent on us, in evidence of our attachment for the reverend hero, to jot down an instance that lingers in our memory respecting him, bequeathing it as a rich legacy to remotest time. ”

“ Ned rose at last, and asked the landlady where we should sleep. She pointed to an open shed-room adjoining the room in which we were sitting, and separated from it by a log partition, between the spaces of which might be seen all that passed in the dining-room; and so close to the fire-place of this apartment, that a loud whisper might be easily heard from one to the other. ”

“ Think of the united voices of all the sturdy, able-bodied lads and lassies of the parish pouring forth the most uproarious symphony of linked sweetness long drawn out, that their lungs could furnish, and you will have some faint idea of our melodious intonations. ”

“ One of the most unfeeling tricks I know of, is the way some folks have got of laughing out, yaw-haw! when they see a gentleman ketching a riggler hyst—a long gentleman, for instance, with his legs in the air, and his noddle splat down upon the cold bricks. A hyst of itself is bad enough, without being sniggered at: first, your sconce gets a crack; then, you see all sorts of stars, and have free admission to the fireworks; then, you scramble up, feeling as if you had no head on your shoulders, and as if it wasn’t you, but some confounded disagreeable feller in your clothes ”

“ They are the first at the fevered couch, and the last to leave it. They hold the first and last cup to the parched lip. They bind the aching head, close the dying eye, and linger in the death-stricken habitation, to pour the last drop of consolation into the afflicted bosoms of the bereaved. ”

“ The affair was seized by the advocates of improvement, and turned against their opponents. Deacon Dogskin and his old psalm-book got into decidedly bad odour; the result could no longer be doubtful; a parish meeting was held, and a resolution passed to abolish the old system, and establish a singing school. In such a manner departed this life, that venerable relic of ecclesiastical antiquity, read-a-line-and-sing-a-line, and we despatched our old acquaintance to the tomb of oblivion, unwept, unhonoured, but not unsung. ”

“ I wouldn’t give my little Harry Clay for all the niggers and plantations in Georgy, as much trouble and worryment as he gives me. Ain’t it curious what store we do set by the little creeters, even before we’ve had ’em long enuff to know anything about ’em. It seems like a new fountin of happyness is opened in our harts, a new value given to everything we’ve got, and a new purpose to our lives, when for the fust time we look upon a little helpless bein’ that is born of our love, and is dependent on us for support and protection. How anxious we is to do everything we can for ’em! ”

“ It wouldn’t be a bad notion on sich occasions to ask the man in the steeple to ring which way the moon is. Lamps is lamps, and moons is moons, in a business pint of view, but practically they ain’t much if the wicks ain’t a-fire. When the luminaries are, as I may say, in the raw, it’s bad for me. I can’t see the ground as perforately as little fellers, and every dark night I’m sure to get a hyst—either a forred hyst, or a backerd hyst, or some sort of a hyst—but more backerds than forrerds, ’specially in winter. ”

“ The hammer ceased to ring on the anvil, and the bar-keeper would scarcely walk in to put away the stranger’s saddle-bags, who had called for breakfast; when suddenly a young man, that had been walking from one side of the street to the other, in a state of feverish anxiety, thought he saw dust away up the road, and stopped. I have been told a man won a wager in Philadelphia, on his collecting a crowd by staring, without speaking, at an opposite chimney. ”

“ It seems to me Mary’s gittin’ curiouser every day. I don’t know what upon yeath to make of her sometimes, she acts so quar. Lord knows, I does everything in my power to please her—I gits everything she wants—I always lets her have her own way in everything, and I stays home with her more’n half my time—but every now and then she takes a cryin’ spell, jest for nothin’. Now, I’ll jest tell you one little circumstance, jest to let you see how curious she does do me sometimes. ”

“ You don’t cook broken-down horse-flesh very easy, no how; but when it comes to chasing up a prairie fire with a chunk of it, I don’t know which is the toughest, the meat or the job. You’d have laughed to split yourself to have seen me in that race—to see the fire leave me at times and then to see me brushin’ up on her agin, humpin’ and movin’ myself as though I was runnin’ agin some of those big ten mile an hour Gildersleeves in the old States. ”

“ I, rather, it, should rain, than not.”
“Come, old man,” said several by-standers, touched with sympathy for the good lady, “come, get on your horse and go home, and we will help you.”
“Oh yes, Uncle Hardy,” said Tobias, affecting to throw all humour aside, and to become very sober all at once, “go home with the old woman. Come, gentlemen, let’s help ’em on their horses—they’re groggy—mighty groggy. Come, old man, I’ll help you.” (staggering to Hardy.)
“Jist look at daddy now!” said Billy; “he’s going to help Mr. Swift, and he’s drunk as Mr. Swift is. ”