ing them off as a
sort of business transaction--an arrangement that does not suit our
social life, and which, it must be confessed, does not tend to produce
the best state of morals in France; the other to give young girls
reasonable liberty, under the general supervision of their parents and
family, but in this case to arm them with knowledge, to let them know
what marriage is legally, ceremonially, socially, and physiologically.
This is a safe way, and the only safe one. Let this be done, and then
if a girl "goes wrong" in any way, it is merely one of those
unavoidable misfortunes which some of us have to encounter.

--Was there ever anything so amazing as this blue-glass craze that has
taken possession of about two-thirds of those who are included in the
term "everybody"? It would seem as if there were no limit to man's
credulity, particularly upon those subjects which concern him most
nearly, religion and the preservation of bodily health. In both he is
ready to listen to any plausible person who will tell him to "do some
great thing." Tell him that he must live a life morally pure and
physically clean and sober, that he must not sin against his own
consciousness of right, and that he must wash himself and eat simple,
wholesome food, conform himself to the indications of his physical
structure, and he will assent in a careless way, and immediately
violate every rule of sound morals and physiology. But tell him that he
must make a pilgrimage to Rome, or that he must lift six or seven
hundred pounds daily, swallow pills and bitters, or live in a blue
conservatory, and he will prick up his long ears, and do it if he can.
What wonder that quacks all make money, and that the "patent medicine
interest" should have a representative in Congress! But quacks and
patent medicines usually must have the benefit of a few years of
copious advertising before they effect their purpose; whereas blue
glass was written into popular favor with the dash of a pen. It trebled
in price in less than so many weeks. The notion that light should be
filtered of every ray but the blue one to produce the best effect upon
the human body and brain is certainly one of the most fantastic that
has been broached since the days of the medical mountebanks. The best
use to which this glass can be put is to the making of hot-beds. Let
our early lettuce and pease by all means be brought forward under
sashes glazed in blue. What cauliflowers we shall have,