turns court and are accepted by the compilable mutton-hash,—­she not yet decidedly declaring for either.  We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery.  We feed ignorantly, and want to be able to give a reason of the relish that is in us; so that, if Nature should furnish us with a new meat, or be prodigally pleased to restore the phoenix, upon a given flavor, we might be able to pronounce instantly, on philosophical principles, what the sauce to it should be,—­what the curious adjuncts.”

* * * * *

“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and to have it found out by accident.”

* * * * *

“’T is unpleasant to meet a beggar.  It is painful to deny him; and if you relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket.”

* * * * *

“Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their fancy; but, much oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of it, how such a woman in their friends’ eyes will look at the head of a table.  Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of, that could not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at all.  These I call furniture wives; as men buy furniture pictures, because they suit this or that niche in their dining-parlors.

“Your universally cried-up beauties are the very last choice which a man of taste would make.  What pleases all cannot have that individual charm which makes this or that countenance engaging to you, and to you only perhaps, you know not why.  What gained the fair Gunnings titled husbands, who, after all, turned out very sorry wives?  Popular repute.”

* * * * *

“It is a sore trial, when a daughter shall marry against her father’s approbation.  A little hard-heartedness, and aversion to a reconcilement, is almost pardonable.  After all, Will Dockwray’s way is, perhaps, the wisest.  His best-loved daughter made a most imprudent match,—­in fact, eloped with the last man in the world that her father would have wished her to marry.  All the world said that he would never speak to her again.  For months she durst not write to him, much less come near him.  But, in a casual rencounter, he met her in the streets of Ware,—­Ware, that will long remember the mild virtues of William Dockwray, Esq.  What said the parent to his disobedient child, whose knees faltered under her at the sight of him?  ‘Ha, Sukey, is it you?’ with that benevolent aspect with which he paced the streets of Ware, venerated as an angel,—­’come and dine with us on Sunday’; then turning away, and again turning back, as if he had forgotten something, he added,—­’and, Sukey, do you hear? bring your husband with you.’  This was all the reproof she ever heard from him.  Need it be added that the match turned out better for Susan than the world expected?”