e institution. The very
supposition is an absurdity. _They_ are the iniquitous aggressors
throughout. They have to endeavored to crush my intellectual
independence by carrying the principle of conformity to a ridiculous
extent, and by enforcing a submission to which no man of honor without
the loss of all his intellectual powers could submit.--I told the
chancellor on the spur and in the excitement of the moment what I
thought of the falsehoods contained in his epistle and of his previous
conduct which, if he is a gentleman, he is bound to justify. He gravely
ignored the letter of complaint I had addressed to him a month before,
or rather answered it by spectral demonstrations the night after its
reception. Such mummery and such terrorism, practiced on an officer of a
literary institution by a fellow-officer is surely out of place and Dr.
Ferris has not yet learnt (it seems) the meaning of an A. M. and of
certain other rights of Academic men, (to say nothing of the courtesy
customary among men of letters of every age and in all civilized
countries), to introduce or suffer such singular proceedings in a
respectable institution. As for myself I do not intend to be intimidated
in the least, and if my life and health last, I shall find the means of
defending both my honor and my position as a gentleman and a scholar. It
is all idle to attempt to crush or gag a man by terror. The humbug of
the spirit-rappers is no greater than the jugglery of
door-and-desk-slamming, of vociferations and mystifications so
successfully employed at the University during the whole of last winter.
As it regards therefore my alleged insanity on these points, I must
confess, that if a _denial_ of the _reality_ of this terrorism by which
the University (and certain societies) have carried on their nefarious
business of subjugation, be required of me, then I can _never_ become
rational again without adding falsehood to cowardice. It smacks too much
of the outrage of '48, when I was _compelled_ to admit the most damnable
affronts as delusive impressions of my senses and when other men's
infernal-pit-iniquity was alleged to be the offspring of my own
tobacco-fume! This is subjectivism with a vengeance! It is too big a
pill to swallow. It produces rather too great an excess of abdominal
convulsions, as the Doctors would say.

If by my conduct I have incurred any censure or violated any law, or
menaced the safety or the life or property of any man in or