—­Theirs is the least learned of the professions, in this country at least.  They have not half the general culture of the lawyers, nor a quarter of that of the ministers.  I rather think, though, they are more agreeable to the common run of people than the men with black coats or the men with green bags.  People can swear before ’em if they want to, and they can’t very well before ministers.  I don’t care whether they want to swear or not, they don’t want to be on their good behavior.  Besides, the minister has a little smack of the sexton about him; he comes when people are in extremis, but they don’t send for him every time they make a slight moral slip, tell a lie for instance, or smuggle a silk dress through the customhouse; but they call in the doctor when a child is cutting a tooth or gets a splinter in its finger.  So it does n’t mean much to send for him, only a pleasant chat about the news of the day; for putting the baby to rights does n’t take long.  Besides, everybody does n’t like to talk about the next world; people are modest in their desires, and find this world as good as they deserve; but everybody loves to talk physic.  Everybody loves to hear of strange cases; people are eager to tell the doctor of the wonderful cures they have heard of; they want to know what is the matter with somebody or other who is said to be suffering from “a complication of diseases,” and above all to get a hard name, Greek or Latin, for some complaint which sounds altogether too commonplace in plain English.  If you will only call a headache a Cephalgia, it acquires dignity at once, and a patient becomes rather proud of it.  So I think doctors are generally welcome in most companies.

In old times, when people were more afraid of the Devil and of witches than they are now, they liked to have a priest or a minister somewhere near to scare ’em off; but nowadays, if you could find an old woman that would ride round the room on a broomstick, Barnum would build an amphitheatre to exhibit her in; and if he could come across a young imp, with hoofs, tail, and budding horns, a lineal descendant of one of those “daemons” which the good people of Gloucester fired at, and were fired at by “for the best part of a month together” in the year 1692, the, great showman would have him at any cost for his museum or menagerie.  Men are cowards, sir, and are driven by fear as the sovereign motive.  Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don’t make it of wood, you must make it of words, which are just as much used for idols as promissory notes are used for values.  The ministers have a hard time of it without bell and book and holy water; they are dismounted men in armor since Luther cut their saddle-girths, and you can see they are quietly taking off one piece of iron after another until some of the best of ’em are fighting the devil (not the zoological Devil with the big D) with the sword