"
"A suspicious man would search a pincushion for treason, and see
daggers in a needle case."
"Wits, like drunken men with swords, are apt to draw their steel
upon their best acquaintance."
"What was talked of as the golden chain of love, was nothing but a
succession of laughs, a chromatic scale of merriment reaching from
earth to Olympus."
St. Giles' and St. James' is written to show that "St. James in his
brocade may probably learn of St. Giles in his tatters." It abounds in
quaint and humorous moralizing. Here is a specimen--
"We cannot say if there really be not a comfort in substantial
ugliness: ugliness that unchanged will last a man his life, a good
granite face in which there shall be no wear or tear. A man so
appointed is saved many alarms, many spasms of pride. Time cannot
wound his vanity through his features; he eats, drinks, and is
merry in spite of mirrors. No acquaintance starts at sudden
alteration, hinting in such surprise, decay and the final tomb. He
grows old with no former intimates--churchyard voices--crying 'How
you're altered.' How many a man might have been a truer husband, a
better father, firmer friend, more valuable citizen, had he, when
arrived at legal maturity, cut off, say--an inch of his nose.
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