ct opinion found itself unable to exist in Dr.
Florret's presence. As no bird, it is said, can continue its song once
looked at by an owl, so all originality grew silent under the cold stare
of his disapproving eye. But Dr. "Fighting Hal" was no gentle warbler
of thought. Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept through all polite
argument as a strong wind through a murmuring wood, carrying his
partisans with him further than they meant to go, and quite unable to
turn back; leaving his opponents clinging desperately--upside down,
anyhow--to their perches, angry, their feathers much ruffled.

"Life!" flung out Washburn--Dr. Florret had just laid down unimpeachable
rules for the conduct of all mankind on all occasions--"what do you
respectable folk know of life? You are not men and women, you are
marionettes. You don't move to your natural emotions implanted by God;
you dance according to the latest book of etiquette. You live and love,
laugh and weep and sin by rule. Only one moment do you come face to face
with life; that is in the moment when you die, leaving the other puppets
to be dressed in black and make believe to cry."

It was a favourite subject of denunciation with him, the artificiality
of us all.

"Little doll," he had once called me, and I had resented the term.

"That's all you are, little Paul," he had persisted, "a good little
hard-working doll, that does what it's made to do, and thinks what
it's made to think. We are all dolls. Your father is a gallant-hearted,
soft-headed little doll; your mother the sweetest and primmest of dolls.
And I'm a silly, dissatisfied doll that longs to be a man, but hasn't
the pluck. We are only dolls, little Paul."

"He's a trifle--a trifle whimsical on some subjects," explained my
father, on my repeating this conversation.

"There are a certain class of men," explained my mother--"you will meet
with them more as you grow up--who talk for talking's sake. They don't
know what they mean. And nobody else does either."

"But what would you have?" argued Dr. Florret, "that every man should do
that which is right in his own eyes?"

"Far better than, like the old man in the fable, he should do what every
other fool thinks right," retorted Washburn. "The other day I called
to see whether a patient of mine was still alive or not. His wife was
washing clothes in the front room. 'How's your husband?' I asked. 'I
think he's dead,' replied the woman. Then, without leaving off her