The Only Happy Author In

To Look Upon Its Grass Grown Yard, Where The Sunbeams Seem To Sleep So Quietly, One Would Think That There At Least The Dead Might Rest In Peace.

How We Delight To Build Our Recollections Upon Some Basis Of Reality,--a Place, A Country, A Local Habitation! How The Events Of Life, As We Look Back Upon Them, Have Grown Into The Well-remembered Background Of The Places Where They Fell Upon Us! Here Is Some Sunny Garden Or Summer Lane, Beautified And Canonized Forever, With The Flood Of A Great Joy; And Here Are Dim And Silent Places,--rooms Always Shadowed And Dark To Us, Whatever They May Be To Others,--where Distress Or Death Came Once, And Since Then Dwells Forevermore.

I Consider A Story Merely As A Frame On Which To Stretch My Materials.

Honest Good Humor Is The Oil And Wine Of A Merry Meeting, And There Is No Jovial Companionship Equal To That Where The Jokes Are Rather Small And Laughter Abundant.

A Mother Is The Truest Friend We Have, When Trials Heavy And Sudden Fall Upon Us; When Adversity Takes The Place Of Prosperity; When Friends Desert Us; When Trouble Thickens Around Us, Still Will She Cling To Us, And Endeavor By Her Kind Precepts And Counsels To Dissipate The Clouds Of Darkness, And Cause Peace To Return To Our Hearts.