Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. — Charlotte Brontë

Unlawful pleasure, trenching on another’s rights, is delusive and envenomed pleasure—its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave forever.

My God, whose son, as on this night, took on Him the form of man, and for man vouchsafed to suffer and bleed, controls thy hand, and without His behest, thou canst not strike a stroke. My God is sinless, eternal, all-wise, and in Him is my trust, and though stripped and crushed by thee, -though naked, desolate, void of resource- I do not despair:where the lance of Guthrum now wet with my blood, I should not despair. I watch, I toil, I hope, I pray: Jehovah, in His own time, will aid.

What animal magnetism drew thee and me together—I know not.