FullReads

…. “A man’s honour,” says a philosopher, “is the best protection he can have.” Then most men might find a heartless oppressor in the predatory oyster.

…. The canary gets his name from the dog, an animal whom he looks down upon. We get a good many worse things than names from those beneath us; and they give us a bad name too.

…. Faith is the best evidence in the world; it reconciles contradictions and proves impossibilities. It is wonderfully developed in the blind.

…. He who undertakes an “Account of Idiots in All Ages” will find himself committed to the task of compiling most known biographies. Some future publisher will affix a life of the compiler.

…. Gratitude is regarded as a precious virtue, because tendered as a fair equivalent for any conceivable service.

…. A bad marriage is like an electric machine: it makes you dance, but you can’t let go.

…. The symbol of Charity should be a circle. It usually ends exactly where it begins-at home.

…. Most people redeem a promise as an angler takes in a trout; by first playing it with a good deal of line.

…. It is a grave mistake to suppose defaulters have no consciences. Some of them have been known, under favourable circumstances, to restore as much as ten per cent. of their plunder.

…. There is nothing so progressive as grief, and nothing so infectious as progress. I have seen an acre of cemetery infected by a single innovation in spelling cut upon a tombstone.

…. It is wicked to cheat on Sunday. The law recognises this truth, and shuts up the shops.

…. In the infancy of our language to be “foolish” signified to be affectionate; to be “fond” was to be silly. We have altered that now: to be “foolish” is to be silly, to be “fond” is to be affectionate. But that the change could ever have been made is significant.

…. If you meet a man on the narrow crossing of a muddy street, stand quite still. He will turn out and go round you, bowing his apologies. It is courtesy to accept them.

…. If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg at noon to-day, the country might be successfully invaded at one o’clock by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.

…. To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil; and to pictures of the latter it has appended a tail, to represent the note of interrogation.

…. We speak of the affections as originating in instinct. This is a miserable subterfuge to shift the obloquy from the judgment.

…. What we call decency is custom; what we term indecency is merely customary.

…. The noblest pursuit of Man is the pursuit of Woman.

…. “Immoral” is the solemn judgment of the stalled ox upon the sun-inspired lamb. “ITEMS” FROM THE PRESS OF INTERIOR CALIFORNIA.

…. A little bit of romance has just transpired to relieve the monotony of our metropolitan life. Old Sam Choggins, whom the editor of this paper has so often publicly thrashed, has returned from Mud Springs with a young wife. He is said to be very fond of her, and the way he came to get her was this:

Some time ago we courted her, but finding she was “on the make,” threw her off, after shooting her brother and two cousins. She vowed revenge, and promised to marry any man who would horsewhip us. This Sam agreed to undertake, and she married him on that promise.

We shall call on Sam to-morrow with our new shot-gun, and present our congratulations in the usual form.–Hangtown “Gibbet.”

…. The purposeless old party with the boiled shirt, who has for some days been loafing about the town peddling hymn-books at merely nominal prices (a clear proof that he stole them), has been disposed of in a cheap and satisfactory manner. His lode petered out about six o’clock yesterday afternoon; our evening edition being delayed until that time, by request. The cause of his death, as nearly as could be ascertained by a single physician-Dr. Duffer being too drunk to attend-was Whisky Sam, who, it will be remembered, delivered a lecture some weeks ago entitled “Dan’l in the Lion’s Den; and How They’d aEt ‘Im ef He’d Ever ben Ther”–in which he triumphantly overthrew revealed religion.