FAULTS.

He who boasts of being perfect is perfect in folly.  I have been a good deal up and down in the world, and I never did see either a perfect horse or a perfect man, and I never shall till two Sundays come together.  You can not get white flour out of a coal sack, nor perfection out of human nature; he who looks for it had better look for sugar in the sea.  The old saying is, “Lifeless, faultless;” of dead men we should say nothing but good; but as for the living, they are all tarred more or less with the black brush, and half an eye can see it.  Every head has a soft place in it, and every heart has its black drop.  Every rose has its prickles, and every day its night.  Even the sun shows spots, and the skies are darkened with clouds.  Nobody is so wise but he has folly enough to stock a stall at Vanity Fair.  Where I could not see the fool’s cap, I have nevertheless heard the bells jingle.  As there is no sunshine without some shadows, so is all human good mixed up with more or less of evil; even poor-law guardians have their little failings, and parish beadles are not wholly of heavenly nature.  The best wine has its lees.  All men’s faults are not written on their foreheads, and it’s quite as well they are not, or hats would need very wide brims; yet as sure as eggs are eggs, faults of some sort nestle in every bosom.  There’s no telling when a man’s sins may show themselves, for hares pop out of the ditch just when you are not looking for them.  A horse that is weak in the legs may not stumble for a mile or two, but it is in him, and the driver had better hold him up well.  The tabby cat is not lapping milk just now, but leave the dairy door open, and see if she is not as bad a thief as the kitten.  There’s fire in the flint, cool as it looks:  wait till the steel gets a knock at it, and you will see.  Every body can read that riddle, but it is not every body that will remember to keep his gunpowder out of the way of the candle.

If we would always recollect that we live among men who are imperfect, we should not be in such a fever when we find out our friend’s failings; what’s rotten will rend, and cracked pots will leak.  Blessed is he who expects nothing of poor flesh and blood, for he shall never be disappointed.  The best of men are men at the best, and the best wax will melt.

    “It is a good horse that never stumbles,
    And a good wife that never grumbles.”

HOME.

That word home always sounds like poetry to me.  It rings like a peal of bells at a wedding, only more soft and sweet, and it chimes deeper into the ears of my heart.  It does not matter whether it means thatched cottage or manor-house, home is home; be it ever so homely, there is no place on earth like it.  Green grows the house-leek on the roof forever, and let the moss flourish on the thatch.  Sweetly the sparrows chirrup and the swallows twitter