e on each. If human beings were constructed on
the same principles as Janus, and had two faces, a fore-and-aft circus
would be convenient; but as nowadays double-faced people only wear two
eyes in their heads, the Barnumian conception muddles the intellect. I
pray you, great and glorious showman, take pity on your artists and your
audiences. Don't drive the former mad and the latter distracted.
Remember that insanity is on the increase, and that accommodations in
asylums are limited. Take warning before you undermine the reason of an
entire continent. Beware! Beware!

I hear much and see more of the physical weakness of woman. Michelet
tells the sentimental world that woman is an exquisite invalid, with a
perennial headache and nerves perpetually on the rack. It is a mistake.
When I gaze upon German and French peasant-women, I ask Michelet which
is right, he or Nature? And since my introduction to Barnum's female
gymnast,--a good-looking, well-formed mother of a family, who walks
about unflinchingly with men and boys on her shoulders, and carries a
300-pound gun as easily as the ordinary woman carries a
clothes-basket,--I have been persuaded that "the coming woman," like
Brother Jonathan, will "lick all creation." In that good time, woman
will have her rights because she will have her muscle. Then, if there
are murders and playful beatings between husbands and wives, the wives
will enjoy all the glory of crime. What an outlook! And what a sublime
consolation to the present enfeebled race of wives that are having their
throats cut and their eyes carved out merely because their biceps have
not gone into training! Barnum's female gymnast is an example to her
sex. What woman has done woman may do again. Mothers, train up your
daughters in the way they should fight, and when they are married they
will not depart this life. God is on the side of the stoutest muscle as
well as of the heaviest battalions. It is perfectly useless to talk
about the equality of the sexes as long as a man can strangle his own
mother-in-law.

I was exceedingly thrilled by the appearance of the two young gentlemen
from the Cannibal Islands, who are beautifully embossed in green and
red, and compassionated them for the sacrifices they make in putting on
blankets and civilization. Is it right to deprive them of their daily
bread,--I mean their daily baby? Think what self-restraint they must
exercise while gazing upon the toothsome infants that congreg