Profoundly grateful, and as if I had swallowed a small baby. … Why, they are perfect beasts of oysters! - William Makepeace Thackeray

Perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens.

Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting bread and butter.

Picture to yourself, O fair young reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig. Picture her to yourself, and ere you be old, learn to love and pray.