Nor was I troubled by what Mr. Vandal said about the late Benjamin Webster.  I am not a Boston man, and have, therefore, the privilege of thinking for myself.  Nor do I object to his claiming for women the right to make books and pictures and (shall I say it?) statues,—­only this last becomes a grave matter, if we are to have statues of all the great women, too!  To be sure, there will not be the trousers-difficulty,—­at least, not at present; what we may come to is none of my affair.  I even go beyond him in my opinions on what is called the Woman Question.  In the gift of speech, they have always had the advantage of us; and though the jealousy of the other sex have deprived us of the orations of Xantippe, yet even Demosthenes does not seem to have produced greater effects, if we may take the word of Socrates for it,—­as I, for one, very gladly do.

No,—­what I complain of is not the lecturer’s opinions, but the eloquence with which he expressed them.  He does not like statues better than I do; but is it possible that he fails to see that the one nuisance leads directly to the other, and that we set up three images of Talkers for one to any kind of man who was useful in his generation?  Let him beware, or he will himself be petrified after death.  Boston seems to be specially unfortunate.  She has more statues and more speakers than any other city on this continent.  I have with my own eyes seen a book called “The Hundred Boston Orators.”  This would seem to give her a fairer title to be called the tire than the hub of creation.  What with the speeches of her great men while they are alive, and those of her surviving great men about those aforesaid after they are dead, and those we look forward to from her ditto ditto yet to be upon her ditto ditto now in being, and those of her paulopost ditto ditto upon her ditto ditto yet to be, and those—­But I am getting into the house that Jack built.  And yet I remember once visiting the Massachusetts State-House and being struck with the Pythagorean fish hung on high in the Representatives’ Chamber, the emblem of a silence too sacred, as would seem, to be observed except on Sundays.  Eloquent Philip Vandal, I appeal to you as a man and a brother, let us two form (not an Antediluvian, for there are plenty, but) an Antidiluvian Society against the flood of milk-and-water that threatens the land.  Let us adopt as our creed these two propositions:—­

I. Tongues were given us to be held.

II. Dumbness sets the brute below the man:  Silence elevates the man above the brute.