it in his teeth he runs
away with the conversation, and if he only took a text his talk would be
a sermon; but if he has not preached, he has made a study of theology, as
many laymen do. I know he has some shelves of medical books in his
library, and has ideas on the subject of the healing art. He confesses
to having attended law lectures and having had much intercourse with
lawyers. So he has something to say on almost any subject that happens
to come up. I told him my story about my visit to the young doctor, and
asked him what he thought of youthful practitioners in general and of Dr.
Benjamin in particular.

I 'll tell you what,--the Master said,--I know something about these
young fellows that come home with their heads full of "science," as they
call it, and stick up their signs to tell people they know how to cure
their headaches and stomach-aches. Science is a first-rate piece of
furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the
ground-floor. But if a man has n't got plenty of good common sense, the
more science he has the worse for his patient.

--I don't know that I see exactly how it is worse for the patient,--I
said.

--Well, I'll tell you, and you'll find it's a mighty simple matter. When
a person is sick, there is always something to be done for him, and done
at once. If it is only to open or shut a window, if it is only to tell
him to keep on doing just what he is doing already, it wants a man to
bring his mind right down to the fact of the present case and its
immediate needs. Now the present case, as the doctor sees it, is just
exactly such a collection of paltry individual facts as never was
before,--a snarl and tangle of special conditions which it is his
business to wind as much thread out of as he can. It is a good deal as
when a painter goes to take the portrait of any sitter who happens to
send for him. He has seen just such noses and just such eyes and just
such mouths, but he never saw exactly such a face before, and his
business is with that and no other person's,--with the features of the
worthy father of a family before him, and not with the portraits he has
seen in galleries or books, or Mr. Copley's grand pictures of the fine
old Tories, or the Apollos and Jupiters of Greek sculpture. It is the
same thing with the patient. His disease has features of its own; there
never was and never will be another case in all respects exactly like it.
If a doctor has scienc