and believed he was the best one in the land, and the
only one whose Christianity was perfectly sound, healthy, full-charged
with common sense, and had no decayed places in it. People who had an ax
to grind, or people who for any reason wanted wanted to get on the soft
side of him, called him The Christian--a phrase whose delicate flattery
was music to his ears, and whose capital T was such an enchanting and
vivid object to him that he could SEE it when it fell out of a person's
mouth even in the dark. Many who were fond of him stood on their
consciences with both feet and brazenly called him by that large title
habitually, because it was a pleasure to them to do anything that
would please him; and with eager and cordial malice his extensive and
diligently cultivated crop of enemies gilded it, beflowered it, expanded
it to "The ONLY Christian." Of these two titles, the latter had the
wider currency; the enemy, being greatly in the majority, attended to
that. Whatever the doctor believed, he believed with all his heart,
and would fight for it whenever he got the chance; and if the intervals
between chances grew to be irksomely wide, he would invent ways of
shortening them himself. He was severely conscientious, according to
his rather independent lights, and whatever he took to be a duty he
performed, no matter whether the judgment of the professional moralists
agreed with his own or not. At sea, in his young days, he had used
profanity freely, but as soon as he was converted he made a rule, which
he rigidly stuck to ever afterward, never to use it except on the rarest
occasions, and then only when duty commanded. He had been a hard
drinker at sea, but after his conversion he became a firm and outspoken
teetotaler, in order to be an example to the young, and from that time
forth he seldom drank; never, indeed, except when it seemed to him to be
a duty--a condition which sometimes occurred a couple of times a year,
but never as many as five times.

Necessarily, such a man is impressionable, impulsive, emotional. This
one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took
no trouble to exercise it. He carried his soul's prevailing weather in
his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went
up--figuratively speaking--according to the indications. When the soft
light was in his eye it meant approval, and delivered a benediction;
when he came with a frown he lowered the temperature ten