to a nunnery of Kilkenny cats 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 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