Now, I will answer your other question, he said.The lawyers are the cleverest men, the ministers are the most learned, and the doctors are the most sensible.
The lawyers are a picked lot, "first scholars" and the like, but their business is as unsympathetic as Jack Ketch's.There is nothing humanizing in their relations with their fellow-creatures.They go for the side that retains them.They defend the man they know to be a rogue, and not very rarely throw suspicion on the man they know to be innocent.Mind you, I am not finding fault with them; every side of a case has a right to the best statement it admits of; but I say it does not tend to make them sympathetic.Suppose in a case of Fever vs.Patient, the doctor should side with either party according to whether the old miser or his expectant heir was his employer.
Suppose the minister should side with the Lord or the Devil, according to the salary offered and other incidental advantages, where the soul of a sinner was in question.You can see what a piece of work it would make of their sympathies.But the lawyers are quicker witted than either of the other professions, and abler men generally.They are good-natured, or, if they quarrel, their quarrels are above-board.I don't think they are as accomplished as the ministers, but they have a way of cramming with special 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 three 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.
