I don’t think they are as accomplished as the ministers, but they have a way of cramming with special knowledge for a case which leaves a certain shallow sediment of intelligence in their memories about a good many things.  They are apt to talk law in mixed company, and they have a way of looking round when they make a point, as if they were addressing a jury, that is mighty aggravating, as I once had occasion to see when one of ’em, and a pretty famous one, put me on the witness-stand at a dinner-party once.

The ministers come next in point of talent.  They are far more curious and widely interested outside of their own calling than either of the other professions.  I like to talk with ’em.  They are interesting men, full of good feelings, hard workers, always foremost in good deeds, and on the whole the most efficient civilizing class, working downwards from knowledge to ignorance, that is,—­not so much upwards, perhaps,—­that we have.  The trouble is, that so many of ’em work in harness, and it is pretty sure to chafe somewhere.  They feed us on canned meats mostly.  They cripple our instincts and reason, and give us a crutch of doctrine.  I have talked with a great many of ’em of all sorts of belief, and I don’t think they are quite so easy in their minds, the greater number of them; nor so clear in their convictions, as one would think to hear ’em lay down the law in the pulpit.  They used to lead the intelligence of their parishes; now they do pretty well if they keep up with it, and they are very apt to lag behind it.  Then they must have a colleague.  The old minister thinks he can hold to his old course, sailing right into the wind’s eye of human nature, as straight as that famous old skipper John Bunyan; the young minister falls off three or four points and catches the breeze that left the old man’s sails all shivering.  By and by the congregation will get ahead of him, and then it must, have another new skipper.  The priest holds his own pretty well; the minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful citizen,—­no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moral instincts, who, if he knows anything, knows how little he knows.  The ministers are good talkers, only the struggle between nature and grace makes some of ’em a little awkward occasionally.  The women do their best to spoil ’em, as they do the poets; you find it very pleasant to be spoiled, no doubt; so do they.  Now and then one of ’em goes over the dam; no wonder, they’re always in the rapids.

By this time our three ladies had their faces all turned toward the speaker, like the weathercocks in a northeaster, and I thought it best to switch off the talk on to another rail.

How about the doctors?—­I said.