Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and disto… - Charles Dickens

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

In short, I should have liked to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet be man enough to know its value