——­Would I be so good as to specify any particular example?—­Oh,—­an example?  Did you ever see a bear-trap?  Never?  Well, shouldn’t you like to see me put my foot into one?  With sentiments of the highest consideration I must beg leave to be excused.

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming.  If they have an old church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here and there an old dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door with their tomahawks,)—­if they have, scattered about, those mighty-square houses built something more than half a century ago, and standing like architectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left them as its monument,—­if they have gardens with elbowed apple trees that push their branches over the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the side-walk,—­if they have a little grass in the side-streets, enough to betoken quiet without proclaiming decay,—­I think I could go to pieces, after my life’s work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be rocked to sleep in.  I visit such spots always with infinite delight.  My friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the imaginative and reflective faculties.  Let a man live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, you may see the sun through it by day and the stars by night.

——­Do I think that the little villages have the conceit of the great towns?—­I don’t believe there is much difference.  You know how they read Pope’s line in the smallest town in our State of Massachusetts?—­Well, they read it

  “All are but parts of one stupendous HULL!”

——­Every person’s feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they may be entered.  The front-door is on the street.  Some keep it always open; some keep it latched; some, locked; some, bolted,—­with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in; and some nail it up, so that nothing can pass its threshold.  This front-door leads into a passage which opens into an ante-room, and this into the interior apartments.  The side-door opens at once into the sacred chambers.

There is almost always at least one key to this side-door.  This is carried for years hidden in a mother’s bosom.  Fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so universally, have duplicates of it.  The wedding-ring conveys a right to one; alas, if none is given with it!

If nature or accident has put one of these keys into the hands of a person who has the torturing instinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the words that Justice utters over its doomed victim,—­The Lord have mercy on your soul! You will probably go mad within a reasonable time,—­or, if you are a man, run off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in Melbourne or San Francisco,—­or, if you are a woman, quarrel and break your heart, or turn into a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it were alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other.