“What!  Make a well man think he is sick?” the Quaker asked in astonishment.

“Sure!  That’s the secret of success.  I can pick out the strongest man in the c-c-crowd and in five minutes have pains shooting through him like g-g-greased lightning.  They are all like jumping-jacks to the man that knows them.  You watch me pull the string and you-you’ll see them wig-wig-wiggle.”

“It seems a pity to take advantage of such weakness in our fellow men,” said David, whose heart began to suffer qualms as he contemplated this rascality and his own connection with it.

“Fellow men!  They are no fellows of mine.  They are nuts for me to c-c-crack.  They are oysters for me to open!” responded the quack, as he drove gaily into the public square and checked the horses, who stood with their proud necks arched, champing their bits and looking around at the crowd as if they shared their master’s contempt.

Pepeeta descended from the carriage and made her way hastily into the tent which had already been pitched for her.  The doctor lighted his torch and set his stock of goods in order while David, obeying his directions, began to move among the people to study their habits.  Elbowing his way here and there, he contemplated the crowd in the light of the quack’s philosophy, and as he did so received a series of painful mental shocks.

“The first principle in the art of painting a picture is to know where to sit down;” in other words, everything depends upon the point of view.  Now that David began to look for evidences of the weaknesses and follies of his fellow men, he saw them everywhere.  For the first time in his life he observed that startling prevalence of animal types which always communicates such a shock to the mind of him who has never discovered it before.  Every countenance suddenly seemed to be the face of a beast, but thinly and imperfectly veiled.  There were foxes and tigers and wolves, there were bulldogs and monkeys and swine.  He had always seen, or thought he saw, upon the foreheads of his fellow men some evidence of that divinity which had been communicated to them when God breathed into the great first father the breath of life; but now he shuddered at the sight of those thick lips and drooping jaws, those dull or crafty eyes, those sullen, sodden, gargoyle features, as men do at beholding monstrosities.

A few weeks ago he would have felt a profound pity at this discovery, but so rapid and radical had been the alteration in his feelings that he was now seized by a sudden revulsion and contempt.  “Are these creatures really men?” he asked himself.  He stood there among them taller, straighter, keener, handsomer than them all, and the old feelings that have made men aristocrats and tyrants in every age of the world, surged in his heart and hardened it against them.

By this time the quack had finished his few simple preparations, and, standing erect before his audience, began the business of the evening.