ng computation,--throwing into one scale
innocence, happiness, manhood, love, life, and into the other a
miserable candle-end? My boy, you and I will get a slate and pencil
before we go into such a chandlery operation!

Why do I tell such horrible stories?--My dear, sweet, tender-hearted
Mrs. G., people commit murder every day: I mean polite, fashionable
murder. They give a stab at your reputation and mine, and smile sweetly
all the while. They watch and wait till our backs are turned, and then
they whip out their long tongues, and--have at you! Your good name is so
mercilessly hacked, cut, slashed, and gashed, that there is scarcely
enough fair outside left to recognize you by. They swear that your most
innocent and gentle pastime is the abomination of decent people; and,
with that happy faculty of judging others by themselves,--a mark of
broad, comprehensive minds,--they run up a list of grievances, among
which swindling and adultery are common trifles. Peeping out from their
hole in the curtain, swelling with the nobleness of their occupation,
and filled with honest indignation at your goings on, they see, with a
clairvoyance which puts Hume in the background, all the errors of
omission and commission your guilty hands and hearts achieve. To be
sure, they back them like a whale or neck them like a camel, according
to the exuberance of their imagination, or the strength of their
ill-will, or the innate suspicion of their natures. But when your broad
back is towards them, they whet those sharp tongues against each other,
and--thug! you have them under your fifth rib, and out at the other
side. Well, perhaps you, Mrs. G., have used such a weapon. Perhaps, when
you found out how innocent the poor victim was, you may have been
rewarded by a scrape of that old saw across your conscience, and the
smoke of the smouldering wick may have smelled nauseous to you.--You
never did? Well, I am glad of it, Mrs. G., because, I assure you, that
fogo must be a sickening one to carry about under one's nose.

But if you object to the horrible, I will gently slide into the pathetic
and melancholic. There is our friend Atticus,--I call him so in public,
because it would not do to name Brown right out, when telling his
private griefs. Atticus, when he read a book lately, having "A man
married is a man marred" for a motto, smiled a grim smile, and muttered
audibly, "Mrs. Atticus is charming, isn't she?--pretty and nice and
neat. Why shouldn