Knocking about the world has beat all that out of me: but it is very comfortable, after all, to find oneself with a dear old daddy and a good coal fire." "Which of the two could you best do without ?" "Well, one takes things as one finds them.

It don't do to look too deeply into one's feelings.

Like chemicals, the more you analyse them, the worse they smell." So Tom began his story.
"You heard from me at Bombay; after I'd been up to the Himalaya with an old Mumpsimus friend ?" "Yes." "Well, I worked my way to Suez on board a ship whose doctor had fallen ill; and then I must needs see a little of Egypt; and there robbed was I, and nearly murdered, too; but I take a good deal of killing." "I'll warrant you do," said Mark, looking at him with pride.
"So I begged my way to Cairo; and there I picked up a Yankee--a New Yorker, made of money, who had a yacht at Alexandria, and travelled _en prince_; and nothing would serve him but I must go with him to Constantinople; but there he and I quarrelled--more fools, both of us! I wrote to you from Constantinople." "We never got the letter." "I can't help that; I wrote.

But there I was on the wide world again.
So I took up with a Russian prince, whom I met at a gambling-table in Pera,--a mere boy, but such a plucky one,--and went with him to Circassia, and up to Astrakhan, and on to the Kirghis steppes; and there I did see snakes." "Snakes ?" says Mary.

"I should have thought you had seen plenty in India already." "Yes, Mary! but these were snakes spiritual and metaphorical.