that is his lookout;--perhaps he thinks the Devil
is better than the other candidates; and I don't doubt he's often right,
Sir! Just so a man's soul has a vote in the spiritual community; and it
doesn't do, Sir, or it won't do long, to call him "schismatic" and
"heretic" and those other wicked names that the old murderous
Inquisitors have left us to help along "peace and good-will to men"!

As long as you could catch a man and drop him into an _oubliette_, or
pull him out a few inches longer by machinery, or put a hot iron through
his tongue, or make him climb up a ladder and sit on a board at the top
of a stake so that he should be slowly broiled by the fire kindled round
it, there was some sense in these words; they led to something. But
since we have done with those tools, we had better give up those words.
I should like to see a Yankee advertisement like this!--(the little
gentleman laughed fiercely as he uttered the words,--)

--Patent thumb-screws, warranted to crush the bone in three turns.

--The cast-iron boot, with wedge and mallet,--only five dollars!

--The celebrated extension-rack, warranted to stretch a man six inches
in twenty minutes,--money returned, if it proves unsatisfactory.

I should like to see such an advertisement, I say, Sir! Now, what's the
use of using the words that belonged with the thumb-screws, and the
Blessed Virgin with the knives under her petticoats and sleeves and
bodice, and the _dry pan and gradual fire_, if we can't have the things
themselves, Sir? What's the use of _painting_ the fire round a poor
fellow, when you think it won't do to kindle one under him,--as they did
at Valencia or Valladolid, or wherever it was?

--What story is that?--I said.

Why,--he answered,--at the last _auto-da-fe_, in 1824 or '5, or
somewhere there,--it's a traveller's story, but a mighty knowing
traveller he is,--they had a "heretic" to use up according to the
statutes provided for the crime of private opinion. They couldn't quite
make up their minds to burn him, so they only _hung_ him in a hogshead
painted all over with flames!

No, Sir! when a man calls you names because you go to the ballot-box and
vote for your candidate, or because you say this or that is your
opinion, he forgets in which half of the world he was born, Sir! It
won't be long, Sir, before we have Americanized religion as we have
Americanized government; and then, Sir, every soul God sends into the
world will be good in th