over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any
human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel,
heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and
perhaps for entire races,--anything that assumes the necessity of
the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated,--
no matter by what name you call it,--no matter whether a fakir, or
a monk, or a deacon believes it,--if received, ought to produce
insanity in every well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a
normal one, under the circumstances. I am very much ashamed of
some people for retaining their reason, when they know perfectly
well that if they were not the most stupid or the most selfish of
human beings, they would become non-compotes at once.

[Nobody understood this but the theological student and the
schoolmistress. They looked intelligently at each other; but
whether they were thinking about my paradox or not, I am not
clear.--It would be natural enough. Stranger things have happened.
Love and Death enter boarding-houses without asking the price of
board, or whether there is room for them. Alas, these young people
are poor and pallid! Love SHOULD be both rich and rosy, but MUST
be either rich or rosy. Talk about military duty! What is that to
the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, with the title of
mistress, and an American female constitution, which collapses just
in the middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber,
if it happen to live through the period when health and strength
are most wanted?]

- Have I ever acted in private theatricals? Often. I have played
the part of the "Poor Gentleman," before a great many audiences,--
more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a