s such or such
opinions. It is very much to his discredit in every point of view, if
he does not. What is the use of my saying what some of these opinions
are? Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to
send you straight 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 vulcanised 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 stage-costume, nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork; but I
was placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper
hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my
countenance, and made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name
stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the
place by daylight. I have gone to a town with a sober literary essay
in my pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced as the most