You may safely bet a hundred to one that a young man who has once lost his purse or his passport, will not lose either a second time.

Each of those misfortunes has befallen me once only, and I might have been very often the victim of them, if experience had not taught me how much they were to be dreaded.

A thoughtless fellow is a man who has not yet found the word dread in the dictionary of his life.
The officer who relieved my cross-grained Castilian on the following day seemed of a different nature altogether; his prepossessing countenance pleased me much.

He was a Frenchman, and I must say that I have always liked the French, and never the Spaniards; there is in the manners of the first something so engaging, so obliging, that you feel attracted towards them as towards a friend, whilst an air of unbecoming haughtiness gives to the second a dark, forbidding countenance which certainly does not prepossess in their favour.

Yet I have often been duped by Frenchmen, and never by Spaniards--a proof that we ought to mistrust our tastes.
The new officer, approaching me very politely, said to me,-- "To what chance, reverend sir, am I indebted for the honour of having you in my custody ?" Ah! here was a way of speaking which restored to my lungs all their elasticity! I gave him all the particulars of my misfortune, and he found the mishap very amusing.