journment."

And the gentleman sat down.

A man belonging to the sect of Methodists arose. "Why should we change
the subject of debate? We are not dealing here with the improvement of
the race nor with the perfecting of the work. We must not lose sight of
the interests of the jealous husband and the principles on which moral
soundness is based. Don't you know that the noise of which you complain
seems more terrible to the wife uncertain of her crime, than the trumpet
of the Last Judgment? Can you forget that a suit for infidelity could
never be won by a husband excepting through this conjugal noise? I will
undertake, gentlemen, to refer to the divorces of Lord Abergavenny, of
Viscount Bolingbroke, of the late Queen Caroline, of Eliza Draper, of
Madame Harris, in fact, of all those who are mentioned in the twenty
volumes published by--." (The secretary did not distinctly hear the name
of the English publisher.)

The motion to adjourn was carried. The youngest member proposed to make
up a purse for the author producing the best dissertation addressed to
the society upon a subject which Sterne considered of such importance;
but at the end of the seance eighteen shillings was the total sum found
in the hat of the president.

The above debate of the society, which had recently been formed in
London for the improvement of manners and of marriage and which Lord
Byron scoffed at, was transmitted to us by the kindness of W. Hawkins,
Esq., cousin-german of the famous Captain Clutterbuck. The extract may
serve to solve any difficulties which may occur in the theory of bed
construction.

But the author of the book considers that the English society has given
too much importance to this preliminary question. There exists in fact
quite as many reasons for being a _Rossinist_ as for being a _Solidist_
in the matter of beds, and the author acknowledges that it is either
beneath or above him to solve this difficulty. He thinks with Laurence
Sterne that it is a disgrace to European civilization that there exist
so few physiological observations on callipedy, and he refuses to state
the results of his Meditations on this subject, because it would be
difficult to formulate them in terms of prudery, and they would be but
little understood, and misinterpreted. Such reserve produces an hiatus
in this part of the book; but the author has the pleasant satisfaction
of leaving a fourth work to be accomplished by the next century, to
which h