Various

“ Such a delightful evening as she had had! and meaning to surprise others, she had herself been taken into a better surprise still; and here, recollecting the happy union of the lone, but not lonely, Mrs. Blake with a child of her old age, as it were, Miss Pix must laugh aloud just as the midnight clock was sounding. Bless her neighborly soul, she has ushered in Christmas-day with her laugh of good-will toward men. The whole hymn of the angels is in her heart; and with it let her sleep till the glorious sunshine awakes her. ”

“ The wounds of grief are less apt to find a cure in that rank of life where the sufferer has wealth and leisure. The poor widow, whose husband was her all, must break the paralysis of grief. The hard necessities of life are her physicians; they send her out to unwelcome, yet friendly toil, which, hard as it seems, has yet its healing power. But the sufferer surrounded by the appliances of wealth and luxury may long indulge the baleful apathy, and remain in the damp shadows of the valley of death till strength and health are irrecoverably lost. ”

“ The world that obtains intense delight from his poems, and willingly acknowledges its debt to the poet, has been less ready to estimate the high and estimable character, the loving and faithful nature of the man. There are, however, many—may this humble tribute augment the number!—by whom the memory of Thomas Moore is cherished in the heart of hearts; to whom the cottage at Sloperton will be a shrine while they live,—that grave beside the village church a monument better loved than that of any other of the men of genius by whom the world is delighted, enlightened, and refined. ”

“ He entered the room with great pomp and ceremony all by himself, and met Nicholas's disappointed look by saying, slowly,—
"Mrs. Starkey, your beloved aunt, will appear presently"; and throwing a look about the room, as if he would call the attention of all the people in the dress-circle, boxes, and amphitheatre, he continued—"I have intimated to your aunt the nature of your relationship, and I need not say that she is quite agitated at the prospective meeting. She is a woman"——
But Mr. Manlius's flow was suddenly turned off by the appearance of Mrs. Starkey herself. ”

“ And how, when we hear the wind whistle, we think of you, O our brave brothers, our saviours and defenders, who for our sake have no home but the muddy camp, the hard pillow of the barrack, the weary march, the uncertain fare,—you, the rank and file, the thousand unnoticed ones, who have left warm fires, dear wives, loving little children, without even the hope of glory or fame,—without even the hope of doing anything remarkable or perceptible for the cause you love,—resigned only to fill the ditch or bridge the chasm over which your country shall walk to peace and joy! ”

“ We call ourselves a Christian people, and the peculiarity of Christianity is that it is a worship and doctrine of sorrow. The five wounds of Jesus, the instruments of the passion, the cross, the sepulchre,—these are its emblems and watchwords. In thousands of churches, amid gold and gems and altars fragrant with perfume, are seen the crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the cup of vinegar mingled with gall, the sponge that could not slake that burning death-thirst ”

“ In the life of this man we see the victory over sorrow. How many with means like his, when desolated by like bereavements, have lain coldly and idly gazing on the miseries of life, and weaving around themselves icy tissues of doubt and despair,—doubting the being of a God, doubting the reality of a Providence, doubting the divine love, embittered and rebellious against the power which they could not resist, yet to which they would not submit! ”

“ While no man can ride into metropolitan success on a hobby-horse, popular dissent will still take no stronger form than a quiet withdrawal and the permission to rock by himself. No amount of eccentricity surprises a New-Yorker, or makes him uncourteous. It is difficult to attract even a crowd of boys on Broadway by an odd figure, face, manner, or costume. This has the result of making New York an asylum for all who love their neighbor as themselves, but would a little rather not have him looking through the key-hole. In New York I share no dreadful secrets with the man next door. ”

“ We must be willing to suffer, since God so wills. There are just so many waves to go over us, just so many arrows of stinging thought to be shot into our soul, just so many faintings and sinkings and revivings only to suffer again, belonging to and inherent in our portion of sorrow; and there is a work of healing that God has placed in the hands of Time alone. ”

“ From the helmeted brow of War has sprung a fairer than Minerva, panoplied not for battle, but for the tenderest ministrations of Peace. Wherever the red hand of War has been raised to strike, there the white hand of Pity has been stretched forth to solace. Wherever else there may have been division, here there has been no division. Love, the essence of Christianity, self-sacrifice, the life of God, have forgotten their names, have left the beaten ways, have embodied themselves in institutions, and lifted the whole nation to the heights of a divine beneficence. ”

“ How Christ-like is the thought of a woman, graceful, elegant, cultivated, refined, whose voice has been trained to melody, whose fingers can make sweet harmony with every touch, whose pencil and whose needle can awake the beautiful creations of art, devoting all these powers to the work of charming back to the sheepfold those wandering and bewildered lambs whom the Good Shepherd still calls his own! ”

“ The East called with her thousands, and the West answered with her tens of thousands. Baltimore that day washed out the blood-stains from her pavement, and free Maryland girded herself for a new career. Men who had voted for Washington came forward with the snows of a hundred winters on their brows, and amid the silence and tears of assembled throngs deposited their ballot for Abraham Lincoln. Daughters led their infirm fathers to the polls to be sure that no deception should mock their failing sight. Armless men dropped their votes from between their teeth. ”

“ Already had the healed wounds of Jesus become pledges of consolation to innumerable thousands; and those who, like Christ, have suffered the weary struggles, the dim horrors of the cross,—who have lain, like him, cold and chilled in the hopeless sepulchre,—if his spirit wakes them to life, shall come forth with healing power for others who have suffered and are suffering.
Count the good and beautiful ministrations that have been wrought in this world of need and labor, and how many of them have been wrought by hands wounded and scarred, by hearts that had scarcely ceased to bleed! ”

“ A beneficent Providence has outstripped our laggard hopes. The work which we had so summarily given over to the wiser generations behind us is rapidly approaching completion beneath the strokes of a few sharp, short years of our own. Slavery, which was apologized for by the South, tolerated by the North, half recognized as an evil, half accepted as a compromise, but with every conscientious concession and every cowardly expedient sinking ever deeper and deeper into the nation's life, stands forth at last in its real character, and meets its righteous doom. ”

“ The poor soldier perils for us not merely his body, but his soul. He leads a life of harassing and exhausting toil and privation, of violent strain on the nervous energies, alternating with sudden collapse, creating a craving for stimulants, and endangering the formation of fatal habits. What furies and harpies are those that follow the army, and that seek out the soldier in his tent, far from home, mother, wife, and sister, tired, disheartened, and tempt him to forget his troubles in a momentary exhilaration, that burns only to chill and to destroy! ”

“ God now ordaining by the fiery imposition of sorrow! how many Sisters of the Bleeding Heart, Daughters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, are receiving their first vocation in tears and blood!
The report of every battle strikes into some home; and heads fall low, and hearts are shattered, and only God sees the joy that is set before them, and that shall come out of their sorrow. He sees our morning at the same moment that He sees our night,—sees us comforted, healed, risen to a higher life, at the same moment that He sees us crushed and broken in the dust ”

“ London can never add arable acres to her suite, while only the destruction of the American people can prevent us from building ten up-country mills to every one which manufactures for her market. She has merely the start of us in time; she has advanced rapidly during the last fifty years, but New York has even more rapidly diminished the gap. No wonder that British capitalists will sacrifice much to see us perish,—for it is pleasanter to receive than to pay balance of exchange, even in the persons of one's prospective great-grandchildren. ”

“ There was wine of Burgundy and wine of Bordeaux; there was Champagne: these three from the Don's cellar in Mexico, and the last cooled, not with vulgar ice, but with snow from the summit of Popocatepetl,—snow that had been there from the days of Montezuma and Guatimozin; while as chasse and pousse to the exquisitely flavored Mexican coffee, grown, ground, and roasted on the hacienda, we had some very ripe old French Cognac, (1804, I think, was the brand,) and some Peruvian pisco, a strong white cordial, somewhat resembling kirsch-wasser, and exceeding toothsome. ”

“ The Fair, from this point, resembled an immense flat city,—the streets of booths being of a uniform height,—out of which rose the great Greek church, the Tartar mosque, and the curious Chinese roofs. It was a vast, dark, humming plain, vanishing towards the west and north-west in clouds of sand. By this time there was a lull in the business, and we made our way to the central bazaar with less trouble than we had anticipated. It is useless to attempt an enumeration of the wares exposed for sale: they embraced everything grown, trapped, or manufactured, between Ireland and Japan. ”

“ He has been counted worthy to be numbered with those who stood with precious incense between the living and the dead, that the plague which was consuming us might be stayed. The blood of these young martyrs shall be the seed of the future church of liberty, and from every drop shall spring up flowers of healing. O widow! O mother! blessed among bereaved women! there remains to you a treasure that belongs not to those who have lost in any other wise,—the power to say, "He died for his country." ”

“ Is it nothing to have had such a treasure to give, and to have given it freely for the noblest cause for which ever battle was set,—for the salvation of your country, for the freedom of all mankind? Had he died a fruitless death, in the track of common life, blasted by fever, smitten or rent by crushing accident, then might his most precious life seem to be as water spilled upon the ground ”

“ FIVE-SISTERS COURT AT CHRISTMAS-TIDE.
For a business street Every Lane certainly is very lazy. It sets out just to make a short passage between two thoroughfares, but, though forced first to walk straight by the warehouses that wall in its entrance, it soon begins to loiter, staring down back alleys, yawning into courts, plunging into stable-yards, and at length standing irresolute at three ways of getting to the end of its journey. It passes by artisans' shops, and keeps two or three masons' cellars and carpenters' lofts, as if its slovenly buildings needed perpetual repairs. ”

“ Even success must have been accompanied with sharpest sorrow; and we had not success to soften sorrow. Disaster followed close upon delay, and delay upon disaster, and still the nation's heart was strong. The cloud became a pall, but there was no faltering. Men said to one another, anxiously,—"This cannot last. We must have victory. The people will not stand these delays. The summer must achieve results, or all is lost." ”

“ If any faith was to be put in human testimony, many marvellous cures were really performed, the fame of which spread far and wide, and caused demands for these medicines to come in from places far beyond the precincts of the little town. Our old apothecary, now degraded by the overshadowing influence of his grandson's character to a position not much above that of a shop-boy, stood behind the counter with a face sad and distrustful, and yet with an odd kind of fitful excitement in it, as if he would have liked to enjoy this new prosperity, had he dared. ”

“ New York was not even in the first place settled by enthusiasts. Trade with the savages, nice little farms at Haarlem, a seat among the burgomasters, the feast of St. Nicholas, pipes and Schiedam, a vessel now and then in the year bringing over letters of affection ripened by a six months' voyage, some little ventures, and two or three new colonists,—these were the joys which allured the earliest New-Yorkers to the island now swarming from end to end with almost national vitalities. ”

“ While the people have been working in their individual capacity to right the wrongs of generations, our constituted authorities have been moving on steadfastly to the same end. Military necessity has emancipated thousands of slaves, and civil power has pressed ever nearer and nearer to the abolition of slavery. In all the confusion of war, the trumpet-tones of justice have rung through our national halls with no uncertain sound. ”