It went to pieces all at once— All at once and nothing first, Just as bubbles do when they burst. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

The hat is the ultimum moriens of "respectability".

There is that glorious Epicurean paradox uttered by my friend the Historian, in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries." To this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris."

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.