and the reason of the chuckle, though on the wrong side, was evident enough; and yet, methinks, the wise saying might have had a tail, to the effect, “and many of us live and die idiots.” At least I know that I have met many imbeciles,—ay, even of that absolute kind who will not be taught that pain is pain, so that I am obliged to differ with Solomon when he says that “experience teacheth fools.” How many beacon flashes, with red streaks in them, have I not thrown out, amidst the darkness of crime, to keep my children off the quicksands and the shelving rocks, and the shipwrecks have been as numerous as ever! Have I not proved the Happy Land to be a hell, resounding with oaths, screams, and hysterical ravings, not the songs of angels, and yet case after case proved the truth of the wise saying? Another flash of the beacon—with perhaps redder strcaks—something of the old story, yet with a difference. On the second flat of the Happy Land there lived for some considerable time, in 1848, two young women, Isabella Marshall and Margaret Tait.
