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 human kindness, the inconvenience is slight, and we are able still to go about our ordinary business of detesting our brethren as usual.  It only shows that the milder type of the disease has penetrated the system, which will thus be enabled to out-Jenneral its more dangerous congener.  Before long we shall have physicians of our ailing social system writing to the “Weekly Brandreth’s Pill” somewhat on this wise:—­“I have a very marked and hopeful case in Pequawgus Four Corners.  Miss Hepzibah Tarbell, daughter of that arch-enemy of his kind, Deacon Joash T., attended only one of my lectures.  In a day or two the symptoms of eruption were most encouraging.  She has already quarrelled with all her family,—­accusing her father of bigamy, her uncle Benoni of polytheism, her brother Zeno C. of aneurism, and her sister Eudoxy Trithemia of the variation of the magnetic needle.  If ever hopes of seeing a perfect case of Primitive Christian were well-founded, I think we may entertain them now.”

What I chiefly object to in the general denunciation sort of reformers is that they make no allowance for character and temperament.  They wish to repeal universal laws, and to patch our natural skins for us, as if they always wanted mending.  That while they talk so much of the godlike nature of man, they should so forget the human natures of men!  The Flathead Indian squeezes the child’s skull between two boards till it shapes itself into a kind of gambrel-roof against the rain,—­the readiest way, perhaps, of uniforming a tribe that wear no clothes.  But does he alter the inside of the head?  Not a hair’s-breadth.  You remember the striking old gnomic poem that tells how Aaron, in a moment of fanatical zeal against that member by which mankind are so readily led into mischief, proposes a rhinotomic sacrifice to Moses?  What is the answer of the experienced lawgiver?

     “Says Moses to Aaron,
     ’’Tis the fashion to wear ’em!’”

Shall we advise the Tadpole to get his tail cut off, as a badge of the reptile nature in him, and to achieve the higher sphere of the Croakers at a single hop?  Why, it is all he steers by; without it, he would be as helpless as a compass under the flare of Northern Lights; and he no doubt regards it as a mark of blood, the proof of his kinship with the preadamite family of the Saurians.  Shall we send missionaries to the Bear to warn him against raw chestnuts, because they are sometimes so discomforting to our human intestines, which are so like his own?  One sermon from the colic were worth the whole American Board.