Sarah Orne Jewett

The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man.

"Step in some afternoon," he said, as affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself.

Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading.

The road was new to me, as roads always are, going back.

We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water's edge.

Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.

'Tain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.

Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.

So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness.