husbands on the subject of alternatives. In that distant day,
homoeopathy, and allopathy, and hydropathy, and all the opathies, were
nearly unknown; but men could wrangle and abuse each other on medical
points, just as well and as bitterly then, as they do now. Religion,
too, quite as often failed to bear its proper fruits, in 1793, as it
proves barren in these, our own times. On this subject of religion, we
have one word to say, and that is, simply, that it never was a meet
matter for self-gratulation and boasting. Here we have the
Americo-Anglican church, just as it has finished a blast of trumpets,
through the medium of numberless periodicals and a thousand letters from
its confiding if not confident clergy, in honour of its quiet, and
harmony, and superior polity, suspended on the very brink of the
precipice of separation, if not of schism, and all because it has
pleased certain ultra-sublimated divines in the other hemisphere, to
write a parcel of tracts that nobody understands, themselves included.
How many even of the ministers of the altar fall, at the very moment
they are beginning to fancy themselves saints, and are ready to thank
God they are "not like the publicans!"

Both. Mrs. Woolston and Mrs. Yardley were what is called 'pious;' that
is, each said her prayers, each went to her particular church, and very
_particular_ churches they were; each fancied she had a sufficiency of
saving faith, but neither was charitable enough to think, in a very
friendly temper, of the other. This difference of religious opinion,
added to the rival reputations of their husbands, made these ladies
anything but good neighbours, and, as has been intimated, years had
passed since either had entered the door of the other.

Very different was the feeling of the children. Anne Woolston, the
oldest sister of Mark, and Bridget Yardley, were nearly of an age, and