—­Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.  Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion.  A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.  We frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what are called religious mental disturbances.  I confess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well, outside of the asylums.  Any decent person ought to go mad, if he really holds such or such opinions.  It is very much to his discredit in every point of view, if he does not.  What is the use of my saying what some of these opinions are?  Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any human feeling in your hearts.  Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races,—­anything that assumes the necessity of the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated, —­no matter by what name you call it,—­no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it,—­if received, ought to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind.  That condition becomes a normal one, under the circumstances.  I am very much ashamed of some people for retaining their reason, when they know perfectly well that if they were not the most stupid or the most selfish of human beings, they would become non-compotes at once.

[Nobody understood this but the theological student and the schoolmistress.  They looked intelligently at each other; but whether they were thinking about my paradox or not, I am not clear.—­It would be natural enough.  Stranger things have happened.  Love and Death enter boarding-houses without asking the price of board, or whether there is room for them.  Alas, these young people are poor and pallid!  Love should be both rich and rosy, but must be either rich or rosy.  Talk about military duty!  What is that to the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, with the title of mistress, and an American female constitution, which collapses just in the middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber, if it happen to live through the period when health and strength are most wanted?]

—­Have I ever acted in private theatricals?  Often.  I have played the part of the “Poor Gentleman,” before a great many audiences, —­more, I trust, than I shall ever face again.  I did not wear a stage-costume, nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork; but I was placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer’s smile upon my countenance, and made my bow and acted my part.  I have seen my name stuck up in letters so big that