sists of a
brief acquaintance with a bottle of pseudo Greek fire which
burnt the pocket out of his best pantaloons."

"Salome, you distress me; and, if Ulpian had not left us, you would
have kept all such heathenish stuff shut up in your sinful and wayward
heart."

"Dr. Grey is no Gorgon, having power to petrify my tongue. I am not
afraid of him; and my respect for your feelings is much stronger than
my dread of his."

"Hush, child! You are afraid of him, and well you may be. I fear
that all your Sabbath-school advantages--all your Christian
privileges--have been wofully wasted; and I shall ask Ulpian to talk
to you."

"No, thank you, Miss Jane. You may save yourself the trouble, for he
has given me over to hardness of heart and 'a reprobate mind,' and his
patience is not only 'clean gone forever,' but he has carefully washed
his hands of all future interest in my rudderless and drifting soul.
Let me speak this once, and henceforth I promise to hold my peace. I
do not require to be 'talked to' by anybody,--I only need to be let
alone. Sabbath-schools are indisputably excellent things,--and I can
testify that they are ponderous ecclesiastical hammers, pounding
creeds and catechisms into the mould of memory; but these nurseries of
the church nourish and harbor some Satan's imps among their
half-fledged saints; and while they certainly accomplish a vast amount
of good, they are by no means infallible machines for the manufacture
of Christians,--of which fact I stand in melancholy attestation. I
have a vague impression that piety does not grow up in a night, like
Jonah's gourd or Jack the Giant-killer's beanstalk; but is a pure,
glittering, spiritual stalactite, built by the slow accretion of
dripping tears. Do you suppose that you can successfully train my soul
as you have managed my body?--that you can hold my nose and pour a
dose of faith down my throat, like ipecac or cod-liver oil? In matters
of theology I am no ostrich, and, if you afflict me _ad nauseam_ with
religious dogmas, you must not wonder that my moral digestion rebels
outright. I shall not dispute the fact that in justice to your
precepts and example I ought to be a Christian; but, since I am not, I
may as well tell you at once and save future trouble, that I can
neither be baited into the church like a hawk into a steel-trap, nor
scared and driven into it like bees into a hive by the rattling of tin
pans and the screaking of horns. Don't look at me so