playing the organ. He
implies that he played it however to add to his income. He was a lawyer
when he first felt a call in his heart to the ministry. "Had my wife
objected to the change I should have remained in the law." He has taken
ale or porter at times, "under doctor's counsel," but in general he has
been an "abstainer." ("From both fermented and distilled liquors," he
adds.) He never has shaved, never smoked. On the other hand, he says,
"I had no inclination to be a monk"; when not at work in the evening, "I
was likely to be out, perhaps at a concert or a religious or political
meeting, perhaps on a social call." His father kept a boarding school
for girls, and that was where Lyman made most of his social calls, as a
youth.

He never overdoes anything. "It is a wise hygienic rule to spend less
strength than one can accumulate." (That seems like the perfect recipe
for not being a genius.) A professional hypnotist once told him he was
not a good subject. "I never have been," he writes: "I have passed
through some exciting experiences ... but I have never been swept off my
feet. I have never lost my consciousness of self or my self-mastery. I
wonder why it is. I am not conscious of being either especially
strong-willed or especially self-possessed."

He reads with assiduity, he says, but without avidity. He seems to live
that way, too.

His sermons, his book tells us, have had merit, but have always lacked
magnetism. (You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be
swept off your own.) He likes preaching, however. It comes easily to
him.

We are all of us so busy with the small bits of life we can envisage,
that we don't often think of how much we all fail to take in. Lyman
Abbott has been kept busy being a purifying influence. Certain other
phases of life, accordingly, simply do not exist for him. If romance
tried approaching the Reverend Lyman Abbott, at night, it would stand no
more chance than a rose would against disinfectants.

Suppose that a Board of Eugenics were in charge of this nation, what
would they do with the species this man represents? They would see his
good qualities--industry, poise, generosity. It would be too bad to
exterminate Dr. Abbott; it is plain we need some of him. "But," they
would reflect, "this species is apt to wax numerous. We must remember
Australia and the rabbits. This type might overrun the whole country. We
might even have to put up barbed-wire, or shoot the