a couple of dozen! (I see my Lord Bishop of
Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture on his right reverend
bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, what are we to say to the
Minister who appointed him? My Lord Cinqwarden, it is painful to have
to use personal correction to a boy of your age; but really . . .
Siste tandem, carnifex! The butchery is too horrible. The hand drops
powerless, appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and
brandish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again; and protest,
my dear brethren, against our having our deserts.

To fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough; but imagine all
women found out in the distinguished social circle in which you and
I have the honor to move. Is it not a mercy that a many of these fair
criminals remain unpunished and undiscovered! There is Mrs. Longbow, who
is for ever practising, and who shoots poisoned arrows, too; when you
meet her you don't call her liar, and charge her with the wickedness
she has done and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most
respectable woman, and a model in society. There is no use in saying
what you really know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana
Hunter--what a little haughty prude it is; and yet WE know stories about
her which are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of
the good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want your
children to know the history of that lady in the next box, who is so
handsome, and whom they admire so. Ah me, what would life be if we were
all found out, and punished for all our faults? Jack Ketch would be in
permanence; and then who would hang Jack Ketch?

They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out. Psha! I have
heard an authority awfully competent vow and declare that scores
and hundreds of murders are committed, and nobody is the wiser. That
terrible man mentioned one or two ways of committing murder, which he
maintained were quite common, and were scarcely ever found out. A man,
for instance, comes home to his wife, and . . . but I pause--I know that
this Magazine has a very large circulation. Hundreds and hundreds
of thousands--why not say a million of people at once?--well, say
a million, read it. And amongst these countless readers, I might be
teaching some monster how to make away with his wife without being found
out, some fiend of a woman how to destroy her dear husband. I will NOT
then tel