of each man's elbow-room than your neighbours
can compass. Going into it, indeed, is for the
most part only a milder term for aggression and
persecution; a cold kind of auto-da-fé, with
interference and ill nature for fagots and tar-
barrels.

When that small, smart, pert young chandler
called upon me the other day, with the memorial
praying for a public repudiation by the parish of
the Reverend A. B.'s doctrines concerning election
and free grace—with the presentation of
the same to the Diocesan to follow—what was
the good of signing it, and so plunging head-
foremost (or hand-foremost rather) into that
spluttering caldron of spiritual wrath? Nothing
could possibly come or it but heart-burnings,
and the rising of rebellious gorges, ending in
the slaughter of that sweet saint, Charity, who is
always dying a martyr's death among the flying
stones of belligerent churches. What business
was it of mine what views the Reverend A. B.
held? So long as he left me to follow my own
path in peace, he was surely welcome to walk
how and where he would! And if he preferred
the thorns and crags and arid wastes of long-
tailed disquisitions on things never to be proved
or explained, to the rich and generous corn-
fields of practical religion in good works, was it
my business to fling a lasso round his heels, and
clap him under the extinguisher of my lord
bishop's prelatic mitre?—or should I be greatly
advanced in godliness myself by checking the
manner of growth in godliness adopted by
another? If the reverend incumbent chose thistles
instead of wheaten bread, that was his affair,
not mine, nor yet the chandler's. I presume he
enjoyed his thistles, else he would not have
chosen them; and neither I nor any one else
can be held responsible for his spiritual
digestion in that respect.

So with that tremendous quarrel between the
two retired East Indians, wherein society was
"shaken to its foundation," as Miss Mings, the
head milliner and senior Sunday-school teacher,
said: what was it to me whether the major or
the captain was in the wrong about that famous
tiger-hunt which made all the turmoil? It was
a matter of the most perfect indifference to
every right-minded person, whether the major
had ridden side by side with the tiger for a good
hundred yards, snapping an untrustworthy old
Joe in his face, or if the captain had shot him
dead half an hour before, as he went unattended
into the very depths of his jungle lair. Of
course one story or the other was a flam; perhaps
both; but what did it signify to me, which, or
if either? I only know that an astonishing
number of expletives were expended on the
occasion, that our pleasant little whist club was
broken up, that the county divided into sides,
and that the sides fought together like tigers
themselves, and that the neutrals who, like
myself, wished to steer clear of both Scylla and
Charybdis, were sure to be wrecked on the rocks
of the one and swallowed up in the whirlpool of
the other, with most indiscriminate impartiality.
This was not keeping out of it to very good
purpose, certainly; but, bad as it was, it was
better than going into it; for if not in the full
meridian of cordiality with either party, there
was the placid twilight of toleration with both,
in the brief intervals of social sanity that did
sometimes intervene. It was certainly
unpleasant enough to have to consider who one
could, and who one could not, ask to meet each
other; whether this was a majorite, or that a
captainian, and if one's dinner would explode in
a bomb-shell, or one's supper terminate in a
duel, for want of a good memory and the art of
fitly pairing; still, it was something in the
scramble to be able to be on speaking terms with
both, however cold and stiff and wooden the
tube through which one spoke.

But if the quarrels of captains and majors, and
the faction fights of small communities are bad
things to handle, what are family jars and
domestic discords? Do you know what stinging-
nettles are? Are you aware of what salt on
open sores is like? Can you conscientiously
recommend as a pleasant experience, actual
cautery, and the application of a bunch of cupping-
glasses? If you are of a nature to rejoice
in these things, then, by all means, dip your
hand into the dish of family dissensions—thrust
your fingers into the pickles contained in family
jars—and when you have tasted of the bitter
brine thereof, say candidly if the food has been
to your liking. It is a little difficult, perhaps, to
keep out of it in this case. What between
Uncle John's hardness and Aunt Betsy's
temper, what with brother Tom's passion and
sister Jane's obstinacy, you are almost obliged
to take sides and go into it with the rest; keeping
out of it being received as treachery by all,
and therefore doing no good to you or to any.
There are times and circumstances when one
must, in self-defence, belong to black or white;
grey and the three primitives being alike
repudiated. And if to hang out a banner keeps
your windows from being broken and your front
door from being battered in—and if to wear a
cockade ensures a whole crown instead of a
cracked one—why it is only common sense to
flaunt an acreage of bunting if need be, and to
stick a cockscomb on your top-knot as big as a
Christmas clown's, fastening it with pins like
skewers, if such is the pleasure of the party
belonging. It need not be a white feather, nor a
red banner, that one sports; one need not be a
coward nor an incendiary; but if the world
about us insists on badges and cockades, by all
means let us adopt them too, so long as they do
not sign us to injustice or to riot. One has to
keep out of singularity as well as out of meddling,
remember.

Scandals and gossipings are things to be
kept out of, rigidly; with an unbending back
and lips hermetically sealed. If indeed any one
likes an affectionate affiliation with hornets, and
rather prefers than not a wasps'-nest for a
domicile, let him go into the world of gossip—
that floating, restless, Protean world where
nothing is as it seems, or seems as it is. He
will have a rare time of it, and ample