"My dear aunt Mary always says that you are the cleverest man in the world; and she must know most about it." "Partiality! partiality!" cried the Major, with a laugh, and pulling his front hair up.

"Such things pass by me like the idle wind; or rather, perhaps, they sadden me, from my sense of my own deficiencies.

But, bless me! dinner must be waiting.

Look at that fellow's trowel--he knows: he turns up the point of it like a spoon.

They say that he can smell his dinner two miles off.