ion upon me, and that is this: How safe
it is to slander a dead man! You may say what you will in print about him,
he brings no rebutting evidence. I have heard that ghosts do a great many
things, but I never heard of one as printing a book or editing a newspaper
to vindicate himself. Look out how you vilify a living man, for he may
respond with pen, or tongue, or cowhide; but only get a man thoroughly dead
(that is, so certified by the coroner) and have a good, heavy tombstone put
on the top of him, and then you may say what you will with impunity.

"But I have read somewhere in an old book that there is a day coming when
all wrongs will be righted; and I should not wonder if then the dead were
vindicated, and all the swine who have uprooted graveyards should, like
their ancestors of Gadara, run down a steep place into the sea and get
choked. The fact that there are now alive men so debauched of mind and soul
that they rejoice in mauling the reputation of those who spent their lives
in illustrious achievement for God and their country, and then died as
martyrs for their principles, makes me believe in eternal damnation."

With this last sentence my friend Leatherbacks gave a violent gesture that
upset his cup and left the table-cloth sopping wet.

"By the way," said he, "have you heard that Odger is coming?"

"What!" said I. He continued without looking up, for he was at that moment
running his knife, not over-sharp, through a lamb-chop made out of old
sheep. (Wife, we will have to change our butcher!) He continued with a
severity perhaps partly caused by the obstinacy of the meat: "I see in the
'Pall-Mall Budget' the startling intelligence that Mr. Odger is coming to
the United States on a lecturing expedition. Our American newspapers do not
seem, as yet, to have got hold of this news, but the tidings will soon fly,
and great excitement may be expected to follow."

Some unwise person might ask the foolish question, "Who is Odger?" I hope,
however, that such inquiry will not be made, for I would be compelled to
say that I do not know. Whether he is a clergyman or a reformer, or an
author, or all these in one, we cannot say. Suffice it he is a foreigner,
and that is enough to make us all go wild. A foreigner does not need more
than half as much brain or heart to do twice as well as an American, either
at preaching or lecturing. There is for many Americans a bewitchment in a
foreign brogue. I do not know but that he ma