The dying have more cause to pity us than we to pity them. They have no grief ahead of them.

`Shall we have desserts?'
Father Linus peered very hard at his napkin while this request was made, as if torn between an unwillingess to sit at a table where such an expression was used, and a simple hunger for pudding. ... no Mount-Smith would have naturally used the word *dessert*, unless of course referring to port and Sauternes and nuts at Peterhouse or All Souls.

The publisher's eccentric decision to publish the book in the quiet week just after Xmas had paid dividends, in terms of lavish reviewing space being devoted to the volume. I suspect that the size of the book deterred most of the reviewers; it being an almost sure way of avoiding censure, to write books which can not conveniently be read in the week or so which reviewers would normally allow themselves for their task. Few writers dare to condemn what they have not read.