He is, in fact, a delightful old gentleman to look at and pleasant to converse with, and on his brow every one who can read may see, visibly stamped, the seal of a harmless and honest life.

At the contemplation of such a man, one's opinion of humanity is sensibly raised, and even house-agents, plumbers, and suburban builders, feel that, after all, virtue may bring with, it some reward.
The quiet and warmth of the afternoon, unbroken to his accustomed ear, as it would be to a stranger, by the murmurous roll of London, made him sleepy.

In his hand he held a letter which he had been reading for the hundredth time, and of which he knew by heart every word; and as his eyes closed he went back in imagination to a passage in the past which it recalled.
He stood, in imagination, upon the deck of a sailing-ship--an emigrant ship.

The year was eighteen hundred and sixty-four, a year when very few were tempted to try their fortunes in a country torn by civil war.
With him were his daughter and his son-in-law, and they were come to bid the latter farewell.
"My dear--my dear," cried the wife, in her husband's arms, "come what may, I will join you in a year." Her husband shook his head sadly.
"They do not want me here," he said; "the work goes into stronger and rougher hands.

Perhaps over there we may get on better, and besides, it seems an opening." If the kind of work which he wanted was given to stronger and rougher hands than his in England, far more would it be the case in young and rough America.