In real life the bitterest grief doggedly takes its rest and dries its eyes; the heaviest despair sinks to a certain level, and stops there to give hope a chance of rising, in spite of us.

Even the joy of an unexpected meeting is always an imperfect sensation, for it never lasts long enough to justify our secret anticipations--our happiness dwindles to mere every-day contentment before we have half done with it.
I raised my head, and gathered the bills and letters together, and stood up a man again, wondering at the variableness of my own temper, at the curious elasticity of that toughest of all the vital substances within us, which we call Hope.

"Sitting and sighing at the foot of this tree," I thought, "is not the way to find Alicia, or to secure my own safety.
Let me circulate my blood and rouse my ingenuity, by taking to the road again." Before I forced my way back to the open side of the hedge, I thought it desirable to tear up the bills and letters, for fear of being traced by them if they were found in the plantation.

The desk I left where it was, there being no name on it.

The note-paper and pens I pocketed--forlorn as my situation was, it did not authorize me to waste stationery.