was admitted by a pretty, plump, Saxon-blond young woman--the doctor's
younger daughter and housekeeper. She looked freshly clean and
wholesome--and so useful! Hiram's eyes rested upon her approvingly; and
often afterwards his thoughts returned to her, lingering upon her and his
own daughter in that sort of vague comparisons which we would not
entertain were we aware of them.

Dr. Schulze was the most distinguished--indeed, the only
distinguished--physician in Saint X. He was a short, stout, grizzled,
spectacled man, with a nose like a scarlet button and a mouth like a
buttonhole; in speech he was abrupt, and, on the slightest pretext or no
pretext at all, sharp; he hid a warm sympathy for human nature,
especially for its weaknesses, behind an uncompromising candor which he
regarded as the duty of the man of science toward a vain and deluded race
that knew little and learned reluctantly. A man is either better or worse
than the manner he chooses for purposes of conciliating or defying the
world. Dr. Schulze was better, as much better as his mind was superior to
his body. He and his motherless daughters were "not in it" socially.
Saint X was not quite certain whether it shunned them or they it. His
services were sought only in extremities, partly because he would lie to
his patients neither when he knew what ailed them nor when he did not,
and partly because he was a militant infidel. He lost no opportunity to
attack religion in all its forms; and his two daughters let no
opportunity escape to show that they stood with their father, whom
they adored, and who had brought them up with his heart. It was Dr.
Schulze's furious unbelief, investing him with a certain suggestion of
Satan-got intelligence, that attracted Saint X to him in serious
illnesses--somewhat as the Christian princes of mediaeval Europe
tolerated and believed in the Jew physicians. Saint X was only just
reaching the stage at which it could listen to "higher criticism" without