and the great fire
of 1666--which in point of population and of houses, nearly swept
London from the face of the globe--to ignorance and neglect of
sanitary laws, and to the failure to provide suitable organizations
for the suppression of conflagrations. He proudly asserted that the
recurrence of such catastrophes is now prohibited by scientific
arrangements 'that never allow even a street to burn down,' and that
'it is the improvement of our own natural knowledge which keeps back
the plague.' I think I am warranted in the assumption that our
American Fire Departments, Insurance Companies, and Boards of Health
are quite as advanced, progressive, and scientific as similar
associations in Great Britain; yet the week after I read his
argument, an immense city lay almost in ruins; and ere many months
passed, several towns and districts of our land were scourged,
desolated by pestilence so fatal, so unconquerable, that the horrors
of the plague were revived, and the living were scarcely able to
sepulchre the dead. Now and then we have solemn admonitions of the
Sisyphian tendency of the attempt so oft defeated, so persistently
renewed to banish a Personal and Ruling God, and substitute the
scientific fetich, 'Force and Matter,' 'Natural Law,' 'Evolution,' or
'Development.' While I desire that the basis of Regina's education
shall be sufficiently broad, liberal, and comprehensive, I intend to
be careful what doctrines are propounded; for unfortunately all who
sympathize with the atheism of Comte, have not his noble frankness,
and fail to print as he did on his title-page:

'_Reorganiser sans Dieu ni roi,
Par le culte systematique
de l'Humanite_.'"

"Oh, Peyton! what fearfully, selfishly long sentences you and
Douglass inflict upon each other, and upon me! The colons and
semicolons gather along the lines of conversation like an army of
martyrs, and to my stupidly weary ears that last, that final period,
was a most 'sweet boon'--a crowning blessing. If Regina's nightingale
soul is to be vexed by such disquisitions as those from which you
have been quoting, I must say it made a sorry bargain in exchanging
brown feathers for pink flesh, and would have had a better time
trilling madrigals in some hawthorn thicket or myrtle grove. I see
plainly I might as well carry my dear old Evelyn--fragrant with
mint and marjoram--back upstairs, and wrap it up in ancient
camphor-scented