nning off in aeronautic voyages on their own
account. This little boy had a naughty brother, who said to him, one
day,--Brother, pull down your balloon, so that I can look at it and take
hold of it. Then the little boy pulled it down. Now the naughty brother
had a sharp pin in his hand, and he thrust it into the balloon, and all
the gas oozed out, so that there was nothing left but a shrivelled skin.

One evening, the little boy's father called him to the window to see the
moon, which pleased him very much; but presently he said,--Father, do
not pull the string and bring down the moon, for my naughty brother will
prick it, and then it will all shrivel up and we shall not see it any
more.

Then his father laughed, and told him how the moon had been shining a
good while, and would shine a good while longer, and that all we could
do was to keep our windows clean, never letting the dust get too thick
on them, and especially to keep our eyes open, but that we could not
pull the moon down with a string, nor prick it with a pin.--Mind you
this, too, the moon is no man's private property, but is seen from a
good many parlor-windows.

----Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay,
you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and
full at evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say, that Truth gets well if she is
run over by a locomotive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches
her finger? I never heard that a mathematician was alarmed for the
safety of a demonstrated proposition. I think, generally, that fear
of open discussion implies feebleness of inward conviction, and great
sensitiveness to the expression of individual opinion is a mark of
weakness.

----I am not so much afraid for truth,--said the divinity-student,--as
for the conceptions of truth in the minds of persons not accustomed to
judge wisely the opinions uttered before them.

Would you, then, banish all allusions to matters of this nature from the
society of people who come together habitually?

I would be very careful in introducing them,--said the divinity-student.

Yes, but friends of yours leave pamphlets in people's entries, to be
picked up by nervous misses and hysteric housemaids, full of doctrines
these people do not approve. Some of your friends stop little children
in the street, and give them books, which their parents, who have had
them baptized into the Christian fold and give them what they consider
pr