_Dosch._ “Then you must fain remain content with each other, and bestow your mutual aid upon the less favored for the recognition of your source of happiness. As the day is drawing to a close, perhaps Dr. Baāhar will favor us, and the other children, with his impressions and ideas derived from his associations of the day?” The doctor, without apology, responded as follows: “During the day I have been so enchanted with the harmonizing voices of the parents and children, free from chiding, whining importunities and reproachful bitterness, common to our schools, both male and female, that I was often prompted to speak to you of the effect that has ever been accorded to harmony in musical concord, from the remotest antiquity; but checked myself from reverting to classical fables in view of the brighter reality of your example, which has impressed me with the reflection of a future, made glorious with the realization of your true affection, as the only abiding source of happiness. We feel ourselves novices in appreciation and capacity for reciprocation, as well as in the power of self-command, but will treasure your loving example for a clearer perception of our faults of omission and commission. Notwithstanding our gratitude has but recently emerged from its cocoon of selfishness, we feel that its rays are brighter, warmer, and more kindly in their influence and extension, and truly hope that we shall be able to reflect your example for the lasting good of the well disposed. If the possibility or probability of reducing a woman’s tongue, young or old, of any race, to the limits of useful, witty, or consoling speech, dictated from thoughtful impressions for kindly reciprocation, had been advocated in my presence by the members of the royal scientific societies of London, Paris, or Berlin, I should have given less heed to their arguments in support of feasibility, than to the babblings of a brook. Or if in prophecy, the scenes of to-day had been foretold as a probable event likely to occur by any transition, I should have attributed its source to the fantastical chimeras of a fool. Moreover, if in thought suggestion the Manatitlan auramentors had substituted the idea that I could improve upon ancestral precedents, I should have thought myself, when free from their influence, subject to the freaks of insanity. Albeit not much given to respect in following advice, or imitating parental example in my youth, still both law and gospel forbade one to think himself wiser in his generation than his antecedents; from this prevailing authority we expected that our men would wield their swords, and the women their tongues, in opposition to their own promulgated ways and means of salvation, to the end. From the light of this morning’s example I can realize, in view of the past, that inconsistency is the soul of instinctive selfishness, as well as the ‘substance’ of law and gospel, upon which we found our vaunted civilization.