r 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 mixt 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 downward
from knowledge to ignorance, that is; not so much upward,
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 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 three ladies had their f