"No, madam,--begging your pardon. I am only desperately honest in wishing that my salvation and future felicity could be secured beyond all peradventure, by a sacrifice of oatcakes, or white doves, or black cats, instead of a drab-colored life of prayer, penance, purity, and patience. I don't deny that I would rather spend my days in watching the gorgeous pageant of the_ Panathenaea_, or chanting dithyrambics to insure a fine vintage, or even offering a _Taigheirm_, than in running neck and neck with Lucifer for the kingdom of heaven. I love kids, and fawns, and lambs, as well as Landseer; but I should not long hesitate, had I the choice, between flaying their tender flesh in sacrifice and mortifying my own as a devout life requires." "But what would have become of your poor soul if you had lived in Pagan times?" "What will become of it under present circumstances, I should be exceedingly glad to know. 'The heathen are a law unto themselves,' and I sometimes wish I had been born a Fejee belle, who lived, was tastefully tattooed, and died without having even dreamed of missionaries,--those officious martyrs who hope to wear a whole constellation on their foreheads as a reward for having been eaten by cannibals, to whom they expounded the unpalatable doctrine that, 'this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light.' Moreover, I confess--" "That is quite sufficient. I have already heard more than I relish of such silly and sacrilegious chat. At least, you might have more prudence and discretion than to hold forth so disgracefully in the hearing of your little brother." Miss Jane's cheek flushed, and her feeble voice faltered. "He has fallen fast asleep over the bean-pods; and, even if he had not, how much of the conversation do you imagine he would comprehend? His sole knowledge of Grecian theogony consists of a brief acquaintance with a bottle of pseudo Greek fire which burnt the pocket out of his best pantaloons." "Salome, you distress me; and, if Ulpian had not left us, you would have kept all such heathenish stuff shut up in your sinful and wayward heart." "Dr. Grey is no Gorgon, having power to petrify my tongue. I am not afraid of him; and my respect for your feelings is much stronger than my dread of his." "Hush, child! You are afraid of him, and well you may be. I fear that all your Sabbath-school advantages--all your Christian privileges--have been wofully wasted; and I shall ask Ulpian to talk to you."