all his local and temporary symbols must be ground to
powder, like the golden calf,--word-images as well as metal and wooden
ones. Rough work, iconoclasm,--but the only way to get at truth. It is,
indeed, as that quaint and rare old discourse, "A Summons for Sleepers,"
hath it, "no doubt a thankless office, and a verie unthriftie
occupation; _veritas odium parit_, truth never goeth without a scratcht
face; he that will be busie with _vae vobis_, let him looke shortly for
_coram nobis_."

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think
what we like and say what we think.

----Think what we like!--said the divinity-student;--think what we like!
What! against all human and divine authority?

Against all human versions of its own or any other authority. At our own
peril always, if we do not _like_ the right,--but not at the risk of
being hanged and quartered for political heresy, or broiled on green
fagots for ecclesiastical treason! Nay, we have got so far, that the
very word _heresy_ has fallen into comparative disuse among us.

And now, my young friend, let us shake hands and stop our discussion,
which we will not make a quarrel. I trust you know, or will learn, a
great many things in your profession which we common scholars do not
know; but mark this: when the common people of New England stop talking
politics and theology, it will be because they have got an Emperor to
teach them the one, and a Pope to teach them the other!

* * * * *

That was the end of my long conference with the divinity-student.
The next morning we got talking a little on the same subject, very
good-naturedly, as people return to a matter they have talked out.

You must look to yourself,--said the divinity-student,--if your
democratic notions get into print. You will be fired into from all
quarters.

If it were only a bullet, with the marksman's name on it!--I said.--I
can't stop to pick out the peep-shot of the anonymous scribblers.

Right, Sir! right!--said Little Boston.--The scamps! I know the fellows.
They can't give fifty cents to one of the Antipodes, but they must have
it jingled along through everybody's palms all the way, till it reaches
him,--and forty cents of it get spilt, like the water out of the
fire-buckets passed along a "lane" at a fire;--but, when it comes to
anonymous defamation, putting lies into people's mouths, and then
advertising those people through the c