We could not help, nevertheless, to take aye a stolen look of each other in passing; and I was a gone man, bewitched out of my seven senses, falling from my clothes, losing my stomach, and over the lugs in love, three weeks and some odd days before ever a single syllable passed between us.
Gude kens how long this Quaker-meeting-like silence would have continued, had we not chanced to foregather one gloaming; and I, having gotten a dram from one of our customers with a hump-back, at the Crosscausey, whose fashionable new coat I had been out fitting on, found myself as brave as a Bengal tiger, and said to her, "This is a fine day, I say, my dear Nancy." The ice being once broken, every thing went on as smoothly as ye like; so, in the long run, we went like lightning from two-handed cracks on the stair-head, to stown walks, after work-hours, out by the West Port, and thereaway.
If ever a man loved, and loved like mad, it was me, Mansie Wauch--and I take no shame in the confession; but, knowing it all in the course of nature, declare it openly and courageously in the face of the wide world.
Let them laugh who like; honest folk, I pity them; such know not the pleasures of virtuous affection.

It is not in corrupted, sinful hearts that the fire of true love can ever burn clear.

Alas, and ohon orie! they lose the sweetest, completest, dearest, truest pleasure that this world has in store for its children.

They know not the bliss to meet, that makes the embrace of separation bitter.

They never dreamed the dreams that make wakening to the morning light unpleasant.