now that when he is tempted to pen anything which
requires him to disguise his handwriting he is in fearful danger. You
despoil your own nature by such procedure more than you can damage any one
else. Bowie-knife and dagger are more honorable than an anonymous pen
sharpened for defamation of character. Better try putting strychnine in the
flour barrel. Better mix ratsbane in the jelly cake. That behavior would be
more elegant and Christian.

After much observation we have fixed upon this plan: If any one writes us
in defamation of another, we adopt the opposite theory. If the letter says
that the assaulted one lies, we take it as eulogistic of his veracity; or
that he is unchaste, we set him down as pure; or fraudulent, we are seized
with a desire to make him our executor. We do so on logical and
unmistakable grounds. A defamatory letter is from the devil or his
satellites. The devil hates only the good. The devil hates Mr. A; ergo, Mr.
A is good.

Much of the work of the day of judgment will be with the authors of
anonymous letters. The majority of other crimes against society were found
out, but these creatures so disguised their handwriting in the main text of
the letter, or so willfully misspelled the direction on the envelope, and
put it in such a distant post-office, and looked so innocent when you met
them, that it shall be for the most part a dead secret till the books are
opened; and when that is done, we do not think these abandoned souls will
wait to have their condemnation read, but, ashamed to meet the
announcement, will leap pell-mell into the pit, crying, "We wrote them."

If, since the world stood, there have been composed and sent off by mail or
private postmen 1,600,378 anonymous letters derogatory of character, then
1,600,378 were vicious and damnable. If you are compelled to choose between
writing a letter with false signature vitriolic of any man's integrity or
any woman's honor on the one hand, and the writing a letter with a red-hot
nail dipped in adder's poison on a sheet woven of leper scales, choose the
latter. It were healthier, nobler, and could better endure the test of
man's review and God's scrutiny.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

BRAWN OR BRAIN.

Governor Wiseman (our oracular friend who talked in the style of an
oration) was with us this evening at the tea-table, and we were mentioning
the fact that about thirty colleges last summer in the United States
contested for the championship in