No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,--parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.

Be very careful to whom you give a side-door key; too many have them already.
-- You remember the old story of the tender-hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom, and was stung by it when it became thawed?
If we take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better that it should sting us and we should die than that its chill should slowly steal into our hearts; warm it we never can! I have seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round these women's hearts.

I knew what freezing image lay on the white breasts beneath the laces! A very simple INTELLECTUAL mechanism answers the necessities of friendship, and even of the most intimate relations of life.

If a watch tells us the hour and the minute, we can be content to carry it about with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand and is not a repeater, nor a musical watch,--though it is not enamelled nor jewelled,--in short, though it has little beyond the wheels required for a trustworthy instrument, added to a good face and a pair of useful hands.

The more wheels there are in a watch or a brain, the more trouble they are to take care of.