ible than before.
Other ceremonies closed the funeral. The whole party, preachers,
physicians, and all, were spiritualists," &c.

But I have before me a letter written by Judge Edmonds, which is a more
painful exemplification of the insanity superinduced by giving way to
these absurdities; in that document you will find him deliberately
stating, that he saw heavy tables flying about without touch, like the
leaves in autumn; bells walking off shelves and ringing themselves, &c.
Also, you will find him classing among his co-believers "Doctors,
lawyers, clergymen, a Protestant bishop, a learned and reverend
president of a college, judges of higher courts, members of congress,
foreign ambassadors (I hope not Mr. Crampton), and ex-members of the
United States Senate."

The ladies of the old country will, no doubt, be astonished to hear that
their sisters of the younger country have medical colleges in various
States; but, I believe, mostly in the northern ones. To what extent
their studies in the healing art are carried, I cannot precisely inform
them; it most probably will not stop at combinations of salts and senna,
or spreading plasters--for which previous nursery practice with bread
and butter might eminently qualify them. How deeply they will dive into
the mysteries of anatomy, unravelling the tangled web of veins and
arteries, and mastering the intricacies of the ganglionic centre; or how
far they will practise the subjugation of their feelings, whether only
enough to whip off some pet finger and darling little toe, or whether
sufficiently to perform more important operations, even such as Sydney
Smith declared a courageous little prime minister was ready to undertake
at a minute's notice; these are questions which I cannot answer: but one
thing is clear, the wedge is entered. How far it will be driven in, time
must show.[AK]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote AK: The Massachusetts Legislature, in a recent session,
appropriated funds to the New England Female Medical College, located in
Boston, to pay forty students for five years; and I have since observed
in a Boston paper that there are twenty lady physicians, who, confining
themselves to midwifery and diseases of their own sex, have a fair
practice, and enjoy the confidence of the families they visit.]

CHAPTER XVII.

_Teaching of Youth, and a Model Jail_.

I must now turn to a more important and interesting feature of Boston,
viz., education. We all remembe