hundred miles. Gradually people and despatches came in,
who said that they had parted company with some of the
other islands and continents. But, as I say, on each
piece the people not only weighed much less, but were
much lighter-hearted, had less responsibility.

Now will you imagine the enthusiasm here, at Miss
Hale's school, when it should be announced that
geography, in future, would be confined to the study of
the region east of the Mississippi and west of the
Atlantic,--the earth having parted at the seams so named.
No more study of Italian, German, French, or Sclavonic,--
the people speaking those languages being now in
different orbits or other worlds. Imagine also the
superior ease of the office-work of the A. B. C. F. M.
and kindred societies, the duties of instruction and
civilizing, of evangelizing in general, being reduced
within so much narrower bounds. For you and me also, who
cannot decide what Mr. Gladstone ought to do with the
land tenure in Ireland, and who distress ourselves so
much about it in conversation, what a satisfaction to
know that Great Britain is flung off with one rate of
movement, Ireland with another, and the Isle of Man with
another, into space, with no more chance of meeting again
than there is that you shall have the same hand at whist
to-night that you had last night! Even Victoria would
sleep easier, and I am sure Mr. Gladstone would.

Thus, I say, were Orcutt's and Brannan's
responsibilities so diminished, that after the first I