cts. Is there not danger in introducing
discussions or allusions relating to matters of religion into common
discourse?

Danger to what?--I asked.

Danger to truth,--he replied, after a slight pause.

I didn't know Truth was such an invalid,' I said.--How long is it since
she could only take the air in a close carriage, with a gentleman in a
black coat on the box? Let me tell you a story, adapted to young
persons, but which won't hurt older ones.

--There was a very little boy who had one of those balloons you may have
seen, which are filled with light gas, and are held by a string to keep
them from running off in aeronautic voyages on their own account. This
little boy had a naughty brother, who said to him, one day,--Brother,
pull down your balloon, so that I can look at it and take hold of it.
Then the little boy pulled it down. Now the naughty brother had a sharp
pin in his hand, and he thrust it into the balloon, and all the gas oozed
out, so that there was nothing left but a shrivelled skin.

One evening, the little boy's father called him to the window to see the
moon, which pleased him very much; but presently he said,--Father, do
not pull the string and bring down the moon, for my naughty brother will
prick it, and then it will all shrivel up and we shall not see it any
more.

Then his father laughed, and told him how the moon had been shining a
good while, and would shine a good while longer, and that all we could do
was to keep our windows clean, never letting the dust get too thick on
them, and especially to keep our eyes open, but that we could not pull
the moon down with a string, nor prick it with a pin.--Mind you this,
too, the moon is no man's private property, but is seen from a good many
parlor-windows.

--Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you
may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full
at evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say, that Truth gets well if she is run
over by a locomotive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her
finger? [Would that this was so:--error, superstition, mysticism,
authoritarianism, pseudo-science all have a tenacity that survives
inexplicably. D.W.] I never heard that a mathematician was alarmed for
the safety of a demonstrated proposition. I think, generally, that fear
of open discussion implies feebleness of inward conviction, and great
sensitiveness to the expression of individual opinion is