of three wives, so that
"good old men" may be solaced at once by the companionship of the
wisdom of maturity, and of those less perfected but hardly less
engaging qualities which are found at an earlier period of life. He has
followed your precept, Madam; I hope you accept his conclusions.

The female boarder in black attire looked so puzzled, and, in fact,
"all abroad," after the delivery of this "counter" of mine, that I left
her to recover her wits, and went on with the conversation, which I was
beginning to get pretty well in hand.

But in the mean time I kept my eye on the female boarder to see what
effect I had produced. First, she was a little stunned at having her
argument knocked over. Secondly, she was a little shocked at the
tremendous character of the triple matrimonial suggestion. Thirdly.----
I don't like to say what I thought. Something seemed to have pleased
her fancy. Whether it was, that, if trigamy should come into fashion,
there would be three times as many chances to enjoy the luxury of
saying, "No!" is more than I can tell you. I may as well mention that
B.F. came to me after breakfast to borrow the pamphlet for "a
lady,"--one of the boarders, he said,--looking as if he had a secret he
wished to be relieved of.

----I continued.--If a human soul is necessarily to be trained up in
the faith of those from whom it inherits its body, why, there is the
end of all reason. If, sooner or later, every soul is to look for truth
with its own eyes, the first thing is to recognize that no presumption
in favor of any particular belief arises from the fact of our
inheriting it. Otherwise you would not give the Mahometan a fair chance
to become a convert to a better religion.

The second thing would be to depolarize every fixed religious idea in
the mind by changing the word which stands for it.----I don't know
what you mean by "depolarizing" an idea,--said the divinity-student.

I will tell you,--I said.--When a given symbol which represents a
thought has lain for a certain length of time in the mind, it undergoes
a change like that which rest in a certain position gives to iron. It
becomes magnetic in its relations,--it is traversed by strange forces
which did not belong to it. The word, and consequently the idea it
represents, is _polarized_.

The religious currency of mankind, in thought, in speech, and in print,
consists entirely of polarized words. Borrow one of these from another
language and religio