—­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 inferior 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.

Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys of the side-door.  The fact of possessing one renders those even who are dear to you very terrible at times.  You can keep the world out from your front-door, or receive visitors only when you are ready for them; but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any mood.  Some of them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semitones, —­touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instrument.  I am satisfied that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of performance.  Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department are found.  A delicate woman is the best instrument; she has such a magnificent compass of sensibilities!  From the deep inward moan which follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range which no other instrument possesses.  A few exercises on it daily at home fit a man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he returns from them.  No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,—­parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.  Be very careful to whom you give a side-door key; too many have them already.