“Dialect tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for anything properly said.”

A characteristically sharp expression of Aldrich's distrust of fashionable dialect writing · Essay collection, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Criticism
• Language
• Wit

“To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent—that is to triumph over old age.”

A compact philosophy of ageing without surrendering warmth, hope or reverence · Essay collection, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Age
• Character
• Hope

“What the poet reads, sees, and feels, goes into his blood, and becomes an ingredient of his originality.”

Describing originality as the transformation of experience and influence rather than creation from nothing · Essay, Robert Herrick, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Experience
• Imagination
• Poetry