etry of his spoken words, of his voice and looks, is grander than
written language, and nothing that I can write will give you the least
idea of it.

For my part, I hope that the next statue set up in the park will be that
of William Cullen Bryant. What is the reason that we should wait till a
man is dead before we give back something for the genius with which he
has honored his country? The readers that may come up three hundred
years from now owe him no more than we do. What are we waiting for,
then? When Mr. Bryant sat down, there was another earthquake of
applause, which had but just time to stop, when it burst out again for
Edwin Booth. The best actor, and one of the handsomest men you ever saw,
came forward and read a long piece of poetry, which just made the blood
stir like wine in your veins. There was a double gust of genius in this
poem; because the poet Stoddard wrote it, and then Booth gave it the
fire of his soul and the music of his voice, which seemed to float and
whisper around the statue long after the crowd had scattered itself over
the park.

LXVI.

RACING DRESSES.

Dear sisters:--Don't be startled; don't hold up your hands in holy
astonishment when I tell you that I--Phoemie Frost--your moral and--I
say it meekly--religious missionary, have been to a horse-race. I am
shocked myself now, in the cool of the morning, not exactly because I
went, but from what happened after I got there.

Have I done wrong? Can a missionary, without knowledge, do her duty? If
she knows nothing of sin, how can she warn against sin?

Then, again, is the running of swift horses sinful?

Sisters, I am troubled. The more one knows, the more one is perplexed
and put about. It is so easy to condemn things by the wholesale that you
know nothing about. One can speak so positive about them, for total
ignorance admits of no argument, and is entirely above all evidence.
That is why ignorant stubbornness is so self-satisfied and comfortable.

After all, I begin to think that "ignorance is bliss." Is there anything
on this earth more snoozily comfortable than a litter of white pigs
revelling with their mother in a mud-puddle--say in August? What do
these contented animals care for the mud that soils their whiteness,
with the pink skin shining through--rosy pigs, as one may call the kind
I am speaking of. Think of them muzzling about in the rily water, free
as air; then turn to your learned pig, chained to a master by t