What is your general estimate of doctors, lawyers, and ministers?—­said I.

—­Wait a minute, till I have got through with your first question,—­said the Master.—–­One thing at a time.  You asked me about the young doctors, and about our young doctor.  They come home tres biens chausses, as a Frenchman would say, mighty well shod with professional knowledge.  But when they begin walking round among their poor patients, they don’t commonly start with millionnaires,—­they find that their new shoes of scientific acquirements have got to be broken in just like a pair of boots or brogans.  I don’t know that I have put it quite strong enough.  Let me try again.  You’ve seen those fellows at the circus that get up on horseback so big that you wonder how they could climb into the saddle.  But pretty soon they throw off their outside coat, and the next minute another one, and then the one under that, and so they keep peeling off one garment after another till people begin to look queer and think they are going too far for strict propriety.  Well, that is the way a fellow with a real practical turn serves a good many of his scientific wrappers, flings ’em off for other people to pick up, and goes right at the work of curing stomach-aches and all the other little mean unscientific complaints that make up the larger part of every doctor’s business.  I think our Dr. Benjamin is a worthy young man, and if you are in need of a doctor at any time I hope you will go to him; and if you come off without harm, I will recommend some other friend to try him.

—­I thought he was going to say he would try him in his own person, but the Master is not fond of committing himself.

Now, I will answer your other question, he said.  The lawyers are the cleverest men, the ministers are the most learned, and the doctors are the most sensible.

The lawyers are a picked lot, “first scholars” and the like, but their business is as unsympathetic as Jack Ketch’s.  There is nothing humanizing in their relations with their fellow-creatures.  They go for the side that retains them.  They defend the man they know to be a rogue, and not very rarely throw suspicion on the man they know to be innocent.  Mind you, I am not finding fault with them; every side of a case has a right to the best statement it admits of; but I say it does not tend to make them sympathetic.  Suppose in a case of Fever vs.  Patient, the doctor should side with either party according to whether the old miser or his expectant heir was his employer.  Suppose the minister should side with the Lord or the Devil, according to the salary offered and other incidental advantages, where the soul of a sinner was in question.  You can see what a piece of work it would make of their sympathies.  But the lawyers are quicker witted than either of the other professions, and abler men generally.  They are good-natured, or, if they quarrel, their quarrels are above-board.