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There are so many other professions, so many cities to be built, so many railways to be constructed, so many poems to be sung, so much music to be composed, so many papers to edit, so many books to read, so many splendid things, so many avenues to distinction and glory, so many things beckoning from the horizon of the future to every great and splendid man that the pulpit has to put up with the leavings ravelings, selvage.

It is the associating together for the purpose of drinking that causes that selvage of bad company to adhere to the good company you started out with earlier in the evening, and it is the selvage of low company that will give every self-respecting man a good deal of disagreeable reflection when he comes to look back at it. Don't buy that sort of a ticket, my boy; the show won't pay you."

And the first to arrive will, no doubt, find legibly and elegantly written in the dust that covers the collection the record of its discovery by Euphemia and me. All along the selvage of Epping Forest there was excitement.

Suddenly we sighted the three girls standing, with a fourth sister, in front of a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway. We had been very merry with them a little while ago, to be sure. But what was the etiquette of Origny? Had it been a country road, of course we should have spoken to them; but here, under the eyes of all the gossips, ought we to do even as much as bow?

"Now," said he, "take that languid gentleman with you, and be so good for the rest of your journey as to imitate his indifference to strangers. Thus you will have a prosperous passage. Good day to you." He slept on the scene of his exploit, rose early, rode fast, and by noon was plainly in the selvage of the great woods.

I now hastened back to take a survey of the scene, and a very curious one it was: a number of carriages were by this time arriving from the town, together with long lines of pedestrians; the centre of the wide road was however prominently occupied by the horsemen; some, dismounted, abided here the coming of their friends, or exchanged greetings with such of these as had arrived but were yet in their stirrups, and a finer set of men I have rarely looked upon; the general effect of their costume, too, was picturesque and border-like: they were mostly clad in a sort of tunic or frock, made of white or of grass-green blanketing, the broad dark-blue selvage serving as a binding, the coat being furnished with collar, shoulder-pieces, and cuffs of the same colour, and having a broad belt, either of leather or of the like selvage; broad-leafed white Spanish hats of beaver were evidently the mode, together with high leather leggings, or cavalry boots and heavy spurs.

Volney Sprague's flaming posters in black and red menaced Shelby from the selvage of the district to the threshold of his door.

He sees one body of men scrubbing one spot on the carpet, another sewing earnestly at a certain frayed selvage, another trying to bring out the dead colour from a patch that wear and weather have irrevocably changed. He blesses them all, but his soul cries out for a new carpet at least, a wholesome and vigorous tubbing of the entire carpet, and a turning over of the whole afterward.

The woman felt admits proudly: "It's Real, you know," or disavows pretension modestly and hastily, "It's Rot Good." In each other's houses they peer at the pictures, handle the selvage of hangings, look at the bottoms of china.... I wonder if it IS the old pawnshop in the blood.

She leaned over to pick up her handkerchief and spit the candy out, but there was enough pepper left around the selvage of her mouth to have pickled a peck of chow-chow. It was her turn to sing, and as she rose and took the book, her eyes filled with tears, her voice trembled, her face was as red as a spanked lobster, and the way she sung that old hymn was a caution.