, into a man's stomach! Don't meddle with these
fellows, Sir. They are read mostly by persons whom you would not reach,
if you were to write ever so much. Let 'em alone. A man whose opinions
are not attacked is beneath contempt.

I hope so,--I said.--I got three pamphlets and innumerable squibs flung
at my head for attacking one of the pseudo-sciences, in former years.
When, by the permission of Providence, I held up to the professional
public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison from
one young mother's chamber to another's,--for doing which humble office
I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though nothing else good
should ever come of my life,--I had to bear the sneers of those whose
position I had assailed, and, as I believe, have at last demolished, so
that nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among the ruins.--What
would you do, if the folks without names kept at you, trying to get a
San Benito on to your shoulders that would fit you?--Would you stand
still in fly-time, or would you give a kick now and then?

Let 'em bite!--said the Little Gentleman,--let 'em bite! It makes 'em
hungry to shake 'em off, and they settle down again as thick as ever and
twice as savage. Do you know what meddling with the folks without names,
as you call 'em, is like?--It is like riding at the quintaan. You run
full tilt at the board, but the board is on a pivot, with a bag of sand
on an arm that balances it. The board gives way as soon as you touch
it; and before you have got by, the bag of sand comes round whack on the
back of your neck. "Ananias," for instance, pitches into your lecture,
we will say, in some paper taken by the people in your kitchen. Your
servants get saucy and negligent. If their newspaper calls you names,
they need not be so particular about shutting doors softly or boiling
potatoes. So you lose your temper, and come out in an article which you
think is going to finish "Ananias," proving him a booby who doesn't know
enough to understand even a lyceum-lecture, or else a person that tells
lies. Now you think you 've got him! Not so fast. "Ananias" keeps still
and winks to "Shimei," and "Shimei" comes out in the paper which they
take in your neighbor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fellow.
If you meddle with "Shimei," he steps out, and next week appears
"Rab-shakeh," an unsavory wretch; and now, at any rate, you find out
what good sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not."-