that descends to charades and music
and inconceivably low intellectual depths; and some of our girls sneak
off and get in there once in a while, like the little girl that wanted
to go from heaven to hell to play Saturday afternoons, just as you and I
used to do, Avis, when we dared. But I find I've got too old for that,"
said Coy, sadly. "When you're fairly past the college-boys, and as far
along as the law students--"

"Or the theologues?" interposed Avis.

"Yes, or the theologues, or even the medical department; then there
positively _is_ nothing for it but to improve your mind."

Listen to Lavinia, one of Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke's sensible Yankee women:

"Land! if you want to know folks, just hire out to 'em. They take their
wigs off afore the help, so to speak, seemingly."

"Marryin' a man ain't like settin' alongside of him nights and hearin'
him talk pretty; that's the fust prayer. There's lots an' lots o'
meetin' after that!"

And what an amount of sense, as well as wit, in Sam Lawson's sayings in
"Old Town Folks." As this book is not to be as large as Worcester's
Unabridged Dictionary, I can only give room to one.

"We don't none of us like to have our sins set in order afore us. There
was _David_, now, he was crank as could be when he thought Nathan was a
talkin' about _other_ people's sins. Says David: 'The man that did that
shall surely die.' But come to set it home and say, '_Thou_ art the
man!' David caved right in. 'Lordy massy, bless your soul and body,
Nathan!' says he, 'I don't want to die.'"

And Mrs. A.D.T. Whitney must not be forgotten. "As Emory Ann said once
about thoughts: 'You can't hinder 'em any more than you can the birds
that fly in the air; but you needn't let 'em light and make a nest in
your hair.'"

And what a capital hit on the hypocritical apologies of conceited
housekeepers is this bit from Mrs. Whicher ("Widow Bedott"): "A person
that didn't know how wimmin always go on at such a place would a thought
that Miss Gipson had tried to have everything the miserablest she
possibly could, and that the rest on 'em never had anything to hum but
what was miserabler yet."

And Marietta Holley, who has caused a tidal-wave of laughter by her
"Josiah Allen's Wife" series, shall have her say.

"We, too, are posterity, though mebby we don't realize it as we ort to."

"She didn't seem to sense anything, only ruffles and such like. Her mind
all seemed to be narrowed down and puckered up, j