ceed to generalize and classify the whole world together,
as none can claim utter exemption from either sorrow, sin, or disease;
and if they could, yet Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps them
all through one darksome portal,--all his children.

* * * * *

Fortune to come like a peddler with his goods,--as wreaths of laurel,
diamonds, crowns; selling them, but asking for them the sacrifice of
health, of integrity, perhaps of life in the battle-field, and of the
real pleasures of existence. Who would buy, if the price were to be paid
down?

* * * * *

The dying exclamation of the Emperor Augustus, "Has it not been well
acted?" An essay on the misery of being always under a mask. A veil may
be needful, but never a mask. Instances of people who wear masks in all
classes of society, and never take them off even in the most familiar
moments, though sometimes they may chance to slip aside.

* * * * *

The various guises under which Ruin makes his approaches to his victims:
to the merchant, in the guise of a merchant offering speculations; to
the young heir, a jolly companion; to the maiden, a sighing,
sentimentalist lover.

* * * * *

What were the contents of the burden of Christian in the Pilgrim's
Progress? He must have been taken for a peddler travelling with his
pack.

* * * * *

To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course
of the day,--events of ordinary occurrence: as, the clocks have struck,
the dead have been buried.

* * * * *

Curious to imagine what murmurings and discontent would be excited, if
any of the great so-called calamities of human beings were to be
abolished,--as, for instance, death.

* * * * *

Trifles to one are matters of life and death to another. As, for
instance, a farmer desires a brisk breeze to winnow his grain; and
mariners, to blow them out of the reach of pirates.

* * * * *

A recluse, like myself, or a prisoner, to measure time by the progress
of sunshine through his chamber.

* * * * *

Would it not be wiser for people to rejoice at all that they now sorrow
for, and _vice versa_? To put on bridal garments at funerals, and
mourning at weddings? For their f