ritten two most truthful lectures, one entitled
'Fashionable Murders,' and the other 'A Cloud with a Dark Lining.' His
revelations with regard to the determination that the Americans evince
not to have children, is fearfully true, more especially among the
women.

"Speaking of having children, reminds me of a circumstance that happened
some fifteen years ago. I had a letter of introduction to a lady who
wished to engage my children to read at a party she was about to give.
She received me with an air of melancholy politeness, at the same time
informing me that the gathering was postponed, as dear little Fanny was
'real sick.' I saw a wine-glass and teaspoon on the table by the side of
the sofa, which had a small blanket on it bound with sky-blue ribbon,
covering up something that I supposed to be a sick child. I approached,
and gently drew aside the blanket. I jumped back--it was a poodle-dog,
whose black eyes winked at me as if about to cry: a sort of appeal for
sympathy shone in its glowing orbs. I was almost convulsed with
laughter, it was so unexpected. When able to speak, I said, 'Pardon me,
madam, for laughing; but I thought it was a baby.' She replied
indignantly, 'Oh, dear, no! I never had a baby; nor I don't want one
either!' And it would be a blessing, I say, if such women as these
_never_ became mothers. When I was a young girl, and heard people say
they hated children, and saw them fondling dogs, and feeding kittens
with a spoon because the _old cat_ was too weak to attend to so many,
and knew, at the same time, that poor _human mothers_ were compelled
(just as _slaves once_ were) to separate from their husbands and
children when _poverty_ demanded that they should go into the '_Union_,'
or, rather, _Dis_union--I say, when I pondered on these things, thoughts
would flit through my mind, whether, when death severed the body from
the _souls_ of these people, that their spirits were not instantly
infused into cats and dogs, and that they came back in those shapes as a
penance for their _brutality_ to mankind, and their _loving-kindness_ to
_brutes_. However, we never went to the party. The woman remarked to a
friend that she thought me devoid of all feeling, to laugh at a little,
sick, _innocent_ dog!

"Three doors from the rooms I lived in is the stylish house of Dr. and
Mrs. Grindle, where there are hundreds of 'fashionable murders'
committed yearly. And twice the papers have teemed with accounts of the
unh