hree 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.

--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