inds. It
struts in stolen plumage, and it is mere plumage. A learned man
resembles an owl in more respects than the matter of wisdom. Like that
solemn bird, he is about all feathers."

"Our Second Advent friends contemplate a grand conflagration about the
first of April next. I should be willing there should be one, if it
could be confined to the productions of the press, with which the earth
is absolutely smothered. Humanity wants precious few books to read, but
the great living, breathing, immortal volume of Providence. Life,--real
life,--how to live, how to treat one another, and how to trust God in
matters beyond our ken and occasion,--these are the lessons to learn, and
you find little of them in libraries."

"That accursed drum and fife! How they have maddened mankind! And the
deep bass boom of the cannon, chiming in in the chorus of battle, that
trumpet and wild charging bugle,--how they set the military devil in a
man, and make him into a soldier! Think of the human family falling upon
one another at the inspiration of music! How must God feel at it, to see
those harp-strings he meant should be waked to a love bordering on
divine, strung and swept to mortal hate and butchery!"

"Leave off being Jews," (he is addressing Major Noah with regard to his
appeal to his brethren to return to Judaea,) "and turn mankind. The
rocks and sands of Palestine have been worshipped long enough.
Connecticut River or the Merrimac are as good rivers as any Jordan that
ever run into a dead or live sea, and as holy, for that matter. In
Humanity, as in Christ Jesus, as Paul says, 'there is neither Jew nor
Greek.' And there ought to be none. Let Humanity be reverenced with the
tenderest devotion; suffering, discouraged, down-trodden, hard-handed,
haggard-eyed, care-worn mankind! Let these be regarded a little. Would
to God I could alleviate all their sorrows, and leave them a chance to
laugh! They are, miserable now. They might be as happy as the blackbird
on the spray, and as full of melody."

"I am sick as death at this miserable struggle among mankind for a
living. Poor devils! were they born to run such a gauntlet after the
means of life? Look about you, and see your squirming neighbors,
writhing and twisting like so many angleworms in a fisher's bait-box, or
the wriggling animalculae seen in the vinegar drop held to the sun. How
they look, how they feel, how base it makes them all!"

"Every human being is e