l memorandum, under the
head of Appearances, not to be deceived by plain bluntness and
snuff-color. There you were wrong; your boasted reason is of no avail in
detecting humbugs; there is no such thing as classifying them. Then,
too, we are in greater danger of being humbugged by another class of
appearances.

In material things we are compelled to acknowledge that things the most
reliable are the most unpretending. The star, by which the mariner has
steered for ages, is not a 'bright particular star;' the needle of his
compass is shaped from one of the baser metals, (though in a figurative
sense gold is highly magnetic.) The inner bears such a relation to the
outer, that the inner senses are named from the outer; we are slow to
perceive that also all objects of the outer senses, are but types of
those of the inner. You see how I have been obliged to borrow from the
outer vocabulary. I give this idea, in a nebular state, trusting that
you will consolidate it. Were we, in a figurative sense, to choose a
guiding-star, it would be a comet, we are so taken with flash and show.
A great truth, though angels heralded its birth, and a star were drawn
from its orbit to stand over its cradle, if that cradle were a manger,
we would reject it; if it assumed not the 'pomp and circumstance' of
royalty, though it worked miracles, we would cry, _Away with it_.
Eighteen hundred years have not completely transformed or transmuted the
world; we are yet ready to reject the true, and be humbugged by the
false. More than eighteen hundred and sixty-two years may yet elapse
before the bells that 'ring out the old and ring in the new,' will 'ring
out the false and ring in the true.' Then farewell humbug.

Yes, it is altogether probable that long before humbug is no more, you
and I will--I was about to say be in the narrow house, but prefer an
expression of Carlyle's--we will have 'vanished into infinite space.' I
prefer this for the same reason that one of Hood's characters was
thankful that 'Heaven was boundless.' She it was whom the physician
pronounced 'dying by inches.' 'Only think,' exclaimed the _consternated_
husband, 'how long she will be dying!' I suppose to the poor man Grim
Death appeared to hold in his skeleton fingers, instead of an
hour-glass, a twenty-year glass.

That the sands of his glass may, for you, married or single, neither run
too fast nor too slow, is sincerely the wish of

Your well-wisher,

MOLLY O'MOLLY.