Excerpts from the Book 'Backlog Studies':

... appearance of a wood-fire. This seems to me blasphemy. Do you think a cat would lie down before it. Can you poke it. If you can't poke it, it is a fraud. ...
... aroma, kitchen vegetables, the mouldy odor of barrels, a sort of ancestral air,-as if a door had been opened into an old romance. Do you like ...
... Boswell or old, Pepys or one of the people who was left out of the Ark. They were talking one foggy London night at Hazlitt's about whom ...
... and a good deal of its healthy cheer. The direct news that the thermometer was approaching zero, with a hopeful prospect of going below it, ...
... which is used to control them. MANDEVILLE. Deliver me from transparency. When a woman takes that guise, and begins to convince me that I can see ...
... somehow, with a longing that was not altogether born of reminiscence. In the winter following, in January, I made an effort to give up the use of ...
... sexton in digging the grave in the wrong place, and the large congregation. From the mantel-piece I watched the group. They had waffles for supper,-of ...
... more serious, has been your conduct with regard to the other sex.. I fell upon my knees in a tremor of fear. I pulled from my bosom a little book ...
... do not seek a more congenial one-or stop grumbling. The world is so small, and all parts of it are so accessible, it has so many varieties of climate, ...
... Palimpsest, fifteen days in advance of the date of its publication, and that his secretary was reading to him that monthly, and cutting its leaves as ...
... a sable (saple the trappers call it). THE PARSON. It's enough to read the summer letters that people write to the newspapers from the country ...
... and through all his morose and vicious career has carried a heart as pure as a violet. THE MISTRESS. Don't you think the Count of Monte Cristo is ...
... and query if that is the latest spring style, or whether we are to look for another if he shaves close, we wonder why he doesn't let his beard grow ...
... you do not run into some reform. The Parson says that everybody is intent on reforming everything but himself. We are all trying to associate ourselves ...
... weariness of an uneventful life. The sacredness of the Sabbath, the hidden memory of an unrevealed and unrequited affection, the slow years of gathering ...
... steps of suspicion must ere-long dog him who does not carry one. The testimonial business is, in truth, a little demoralizing, almost as much so ...
... Science is not able to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I am very far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness ...
... and the habit has very likely been the death of him. If so, it is to be regretted. For it would have been interesting to watch the process of his gradual ...
... bearers, who did not seem to fancy the splendor of the night, for they jumped about on the snow crust, and I could see them shiver and shake in the ...
... way, How is the dear uncle this morning. And, as she spoke, she actually bent down and kissed his horrid old cheek, red-hot with currie and brandy ...