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 the Little Gentleman. 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 gets 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 country as the authors of them,--oh, then it is that they let not their left hand know what their right hand doeth! I don't like Ehud's style of doing business, Sir. He comes along with a very sanctimonious look, Sir, with his “secret errand unto thee,” and his “message from God unto thee,” and then pulls out his hidden knife with that unsuspected hand of his,--(the Little Gentleman lifted his clenched left hand with the blood-red jewel on the ring-finger,)--and runs it, blade and haft, into a man's stomach! Don't meddle with these fellows, Sir. They are read mostly by persons whom you would not reach, if you were to write ever so much. Let 'em alone. A man whose opinions are not attacked is beneath contempt. I hope so,--I said.--I got three pamphlets and innumerable squibs flung at my head for attacking one of the pseudo-sciences, in former years. When, by the permission of Providence, I held up to the professional public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison from one young mother's chamber to another's,--for doing which humble office I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though nothing else good should ever come of my life,--I had to bear the sneers of those whose position I had assailed, and, as I believe, have at last demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among the ruins.--What would you do, if the folks without names kept at you, trying to get a San Benito on to your shoulders that would fit you?--Would you stand still in fly-time, or would you give a kick now and then?