al 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 t