You are always inclined to think too much and to talk too little.

Now I, on the contrary, am always--" "Inclined to talk too much and think too little--eh, Fred ?" "Bah! don't try to be funny, man; you haven't it in you.

Did you ever see such a miserable set of creatures as the old Esquimau women are at Upernavik ?" "Why, what put _them_, into your head ?" inquired Tom laughing.
"Yonder iceberg! Look at it! There's the nose and chin exactly of the extraordinary hag you gave your silk pocket-handkerchief to at parting.
Now, I never saw such a miserable old woman as that before, did you ?" Tom Singleton's whole demeanour changed, and his dark eyes brightened as the strongly-marked brows frowned over them, while he replied, "Yes, Fred, I have seen old women more miserable than that.

I have seen women so old that their tottering limbs could scarcely support them, going about in the bitterest November winds, with clothing too scant to cover their wrinkled bodies, and so ragged and filthy that you would have shrunk from touching it--I have seen such groping about among heaps of filth that the very dogs looked at and turned away from as if in disgust." Fred was inclined to laugh at his friend's sudden change of manner; but there was something in the young surgeon's character--perhaps its deep earnestness--that rendered it impossible, at least for his friends, to be jocular when he was disposed to be serious.

Fred became grave as he spoke.
"Where have you seen such poor wretches, Tom ?" he asked, with a look of interest.
"In the cities, the civilized cities of our own Christian land.