The old Doctor knew by sad experience that dreadful mistake against which all medical practitioners should be warned.  His experience may well be a guide for others.  Do not overlook the desire for spiritual advice and consolation which patients sometimes feel, and, with the frightful mauvaise honte peculiar to Protestantism, alone among all human beliefs, are ashamed to tell.  As a part of medical treatment, it is the physician’s business to detect the hidden longing for the food of the soul, as much as for any form of bodily nourishment.  Especially in the higher walks of society, where this unutterably miserable false shame of Protestantism acts in proportion to the general acuteness of the cultivated sensibilities, let no unwillingness to suggest the sick person’s real need suffer him to languish between his want and his morbid sensitiveness.  What an infinite advantage the Mussulmans and the Catholics have over many of our more exclusively spiritual sects in the way they keep their religion always by them and never blush for it!  And besides this spiritual longing, we should never forget that

  “On some fond breast the parting soul relies,”

and the minister of religion, in addition to the sympathetic nature which we have a right to demand in him, has trained himself to the art of entering into the feelings of others.

The reader must pardon this digression, which introduces the visit of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather to Elsie Venner.  It was mentioned to her that he would like to call and see how she was, and she consented,—­not with much apparent interest, for she had reasons of her own for not feeling any very deep conviction of his sympathy for persons in sorrow.  But he came, and worked the conversation round to religion, and confused her with his hybrid notions, half made up of what he had been believing and teaching all his life, and half of the new doctrines which he had veneered upon the surface of his old belief.  He got so far as to make a prayer with her,—­a cool, well-guarded prayer, which compromised his faith as little as possible, and which, if devotion were a game played against Providence, might have been considered a cautious and sagacious move.

When he had gone, Elsie called Old Sophy to her.

“Sophy,” she said, “don’t let them send that cold-hearted man to me any more.  If your old minister comes to see you, I should like to hear him talk.  He looks as if he cared for everybody, and would care for me.  And, Sophy, if I should die one of these days, I should like to have that old minister come and say whatever is to be said over me.  It would comfort Dudley more, I know, than to have that hard man here, when you’re in trouble:  for some of you will be sorry when I’m gone,—­won’t you, Sophy?”

The poor old black woman could not stand this question.  The cold minister had frozen Elsie until she felt as if nobody cared for her or would regret her,—­and her question had betrayed this momentary feeling.