The various guises under which Ruin makes his approaches to his victims:
to the merchant, in the guise of a merchant offering speculations; to the
young heir, a jolly companion; to the maiden, a sighing, sentimentalist
lover.

What were the contents of the burden of Christian in the Pilgrim's
Progress? He must have been taken for a pedler travelling with his pack.

To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course
of the day,--events of ordinary occurrence: as, the clocks have struck,
the dead have been buried.

Curious to imagine what murmurings and discontent would be excited, if
any of the great so-called calamities of human beings were to be
abolished,--as, for instance, death.

Trifles to one are matters of life and death to another. As, for
instance, a farmer desires a brisk breeze to winnow his grain; and
mariners, to blow them out of the reach of pirates.

A recluse, like myself, or a prisoner, to measure time by the progress of
sunshine through his chamber.

Would it not be wiser for people to rejoice at all that they now sorrow
for, and vice versa? To put on bridal garments at funerals, and mourning
at weddings? For their friends to condole with them when they attained
riches and honor, as only so much care added?

If in a village it were a custom to hang a funeral garland or other token
of death on a house where some one had died, and there to let it remain