lly, Bishop! I thought you had passed the sophomoric stage, and
it is a shameful waste of dialectic ammunition to throw your
antithesis at me. According to your doctrine, America ought to buy up
and import all the deformed unfortunates who are annually exposed in
China, in order that our people should properly appreciate the
superiority of sound limbs, and the value of the five senses; and
healthy young people should throng the lazarettos and alms-houses to
learn the nature of their own disadvantages. It is equally desirable
that wise men like you and Peyton should accustom yourselves to the
society of--well--I use polite diction, of imbeciles, of 'innocents,'
in order to set a true value on learning and your own astute logic?"

"My dear little mother, you chop your logic so furiously with a broad
axe, that you darken the air with a hurricane of chips and splinters.
Like all ladies who attempt to argue, you rush into the _reductio ad
absurdum_, and find it impossible to discriminate between----"

"Wisdom and conceit? Bless you, Bishop, observation has taught me all
the shades and delicate gradations of that difference. We women no
more mistake the latter for the former, than the gods who declined to
turn cannibal when they went to dine with Tantalus, and were offered
a fricassee of Pelops. Now I----

"Ceres did eat of it!" exclaimed her son, adroitly avoiding a tweak
of the ear, by throwing his head back, beyond the touch of her
fingers.

"A wretched pagan fable, sir, with which orthodox bishops should hold
no communion. Tell me, you beardless Gamaliel, where you accumulated
your knowledge relative to the education of girls? Present us a chart
of your experience. You talk of hampering and cramping Regina's
faculties, as if I had put her brains in a pair of stays, and daily
tightened the lacers."

"I am inclined to think the usual forms of female education have
precisely that effect. The fact is, mother, it appears that women in
this country are expected to come the reserve magazines of piety, of
religious fervour, on the certainly powerful principle that
'ignorance is the mother of devotion.' True knowledge, which springs
from fearless investigation, is a far nobler and more reliable
conservator of pure vital Christianity."

"_Exempli gratia_, Miss Martineau and Madame Dudevant, who are
crowned heads among the _cognoscenti?_ Or perhaps you would prefer a
second 'La Pelouse,' governed by Miss Weber, who certainly