s than to anything like
universal brotherhood. He opened our lyceum as if it had been an oyster,
without any regard for the feelings of those inside. He pitched into the
world in general, and all his neighbors past and present in particular.
Even the babe unborn did not escape some unsavory epithets in the way of
vaticination. I sat down, meaning to write you an essay on "The Right of
Private Judgment as distinguished from the Right of Public
Vituperation"; but I forbear. It may be that I do not understand the
nature of philanthropy.

Why, here is Philip Vandal, for example. He loves his kind so much that
he has not a word softer than a brickbat for a single mother's son of
them. He goes about to save them by proving that not one of them is
worth damning. And he does it all from the point of view of an early (a
_knurly_) Christian. Let me illustrate. I was sauntering along Broadway
once, and was attracted by a bird-fancier's shop. I like dealers in
out-of-the-way things,--traders in bigotry and virtue are too
common,--and so I went in. The gem of the collection was a terrier,--a
perfect beauty, uglier than philanthropy itself, and hairier, as a
Cockney would say, than the 'ole British hairystocracy. "A'n't he a
stunner?" said my disrespectable friend, the master of the shop. "Ah,
you should see him worry a rat! He does it like a puffic Christian!"
Since then, the world has been divided for me into Christians and
_perfect_ Christians; and I find so many of the latter species in
proportion to the former, that I begin to pity the rats. They (the rats)
have at least one virtue,--they are not eloquent.

It is, I think, a universally recognized truth of natural history, that
a young lady is sure to fall in love with a young man for whom she feels
at first an unconquerable aversion; and it must be on the same principle
that the first symptoms of love for our neighbor almost always manifest
themselves in a violent disgust at the world in general, on the part of
the apostles of that gospel. They give every token of hating their
neighbors consumedly; _argal_, they are going to be madly enamored of
them. Or, perhaps, this is the manner in which Universal Brotherhood
shows itself in people who wilfully subject themselves to infection as a
prophylactic. In the natural way we might find the disease inconvenient
and even expensive; but thus vaccinated with virus from the udders
(whatever they may be) that yield the (butter-)milk of h