Returning about midnight, he took off his boots outside, so as not to awaken his friend, entered softly, knocked away the prop, and prepared to turn in.  But the noise of pounding on the rail had aroused the householder, and so great was the feeling of relief induced by the relaxation of the maxillary muscles, that he unconsciously shut his mouth to smile, without giving his tenant time to get into the bedroom.  The Doctor was just stooping to untie his drawers, when he was caught between the floor and ceiling, like a lemon in a squeezer.

Next day the melancholy remains were given up to our informant, who displays a singular reticence regarding his disposition of them; merely picking his teeth with his claws in an absent, thoughtful kind of way, as if the subject were too mournful to be discussed in all its harrowing details.

None of the Doctor’s maps or instruments were recovered; his bereaved landlord holds them as security for certain rents claimed to be due and unpaid.  It is probable that Great Britain will make a stern demand for them, and if they are not at once surrendered will-submit her claim to a Conference.

....  The prim young maidens who affiliate with the Young Men’s Christian Association of San Francisco-who furnish the posies for their festivals, and assist in the singing of psalms-have a gymnasium in the temple.  Thither they troop nightly to display their skill in turning inside out and shutting themselves up like jack-knives of the gentler kind.

Here may be seen the godly Rachel and the serious Ruth, suspended by their respective toes between the heaven to which they aspire and the wicked world they do abhor.  Here the meek-eyed Hannah, pendent from the horizontal bar, doubleth herself upon herself and stares fixedly backward from between her shapely limbs, a thing of beauty and a joy for several minutes.  Mehitable Ann, beloved of young Soapenlocks, vaults lightly over a barrier and with unspoken prayer lays hold on the unstable trapeze mounting aloft in air.  Jerusha, comeliest of her sex, ties herself in a double bow-knot, and meditates upon the doctrine of election.

O, blessed temple of grace divine!  O, innocence and youth and simple faith!  O, water and molasses and unsalted butter!  O, niceness absolute and godly whey!  Would that we were like unto these ewe lambs, that we might frisk and gambol among them without evil.  Would that we were female, and Christian, and immature, with a flavour as of green grass and a hope in heaven.  Then would we, too, sing hymns through our blessed nose, and contort and musculate with much satisfaction of soul, even in the gymnasium of The Straight-backed.

....  Some raging iconoclast, after having overthrown religion by history, upset history by science, and then toppled over science, has now laid his impious hands upon babies’ nursing bottles.

“The tubes of these infernal machines,” says this tearing beast, “are composed of india-rubber dissolved in bisulphide of carbon, and thickened with lead, resin, and sometimes oxysulphuret of antimony, from which, when it comes in contact with the milk, sulphuretted hydrogen is evolved, and lactate of lead formed in the stomach.”