_Dr. B._ “Why, its connection is self suggestive; virtue and vice in sexual array, for the supremacy of example, naturally oppose to each other their attractions and temptations. Fortunately, the harmonizing beauty of woman, with loving affection, impressed on the rude selfishness of man the preferred happiness of a home subject to graceful refinements, and with her sex in the majority held his passions and appetites of instinct in abeyance. To overcome this tacit rule man devised a series of temptations to hold her in subjugation to his control. These were addressed to her vanity and envy, incited by the jealous instigations of man’s preferment on the score of beauty. This led to artificial adornment, which placed the means of temptation in the hands of man. Then, as a plea for the encouragement of virtue, religious revelations were instituted under the conjurations of mystery to control, with fear, superstitious simplicity.” _Padre._ “Perhaps I don’t quite understand you, for I can scarcely account for my own thoughts as they seem to be so mixed with new impressions; but if I understand what you express in words, I will answer for myself that the revealed way of salvation is to use all the blessings of life with moderation.” _Mr. Welson._ (Amused.) “With the doctor’s permission, you will perhaps appreciate an illustration that occurs to me? Woman’s naturally unselfish affection, unbiased by the temptations of vanity and envious curiosity, exerts with gentle forbearance a restraint upon the more brutal appetites of man, softening asperities provoked by over indulgence. Theodosius, the emperor champion of Christianity, opened a way for the incursions of northern barbarians by patronizing the intolerant sway it usurped over the more primitive and lenient rites of paganism, as it weakened, by the introduction of effeminate luxuries which allied the sexes for degeneration.” _Padre._ “I have never been much of a book-worm, but it appears to me if man, as Dr. Baāhar says, represents vice and woman virtue, your college learning directly tends to the cultivation of a vicious course by keeping before the people the barbarous acts of the ancients derived from their own language, which gives the scholar a directing power, from a studied understanding of the corruptions practiced in past ages. So you see, it’s far better for woman, and the world at large, that she’s denied the means of classical study; for from your own admissions, her curiosity and envious vanity rages so greatly at the present day she’d be more likely to play the part of a Cleopatra than a Zenobia. As the world runs, I think the less we know of the past the better it will be for our salvation.” _Mr. W._ “But you forget church history, padre, from the record of which you derive your knowledge of the fathers?” _Padre._ “Well, but that is different from profane, for it teaches us the way of salvation by saving grace.” _Mr. W._ “Yes, through the tender mercies of the Inquisition.”