children to
read it.' Ministers, as a class, know less practically of human nature
than any other _class_ of men. As I belong to the fraternity, I can say
this without prejudice. Men are reserved in the presence of a
respectable clergyman. I might live in Schenectady, and discharge all my
appropriate duties from year to year, and never hear an oath, nor see a
man drunk; and if some one should ask me, 'What sort of a population
have you in Schenectady? Are they a moral people? Do they swear? Do they
get drunk?' for aught that I had seen or heard, I might answer, 'This
is, after all, a very decent world. There is very little vice in it.
People have entirely left off the sin of profaneness; and, as to
intemperance, there is very little of that.' But I can put on my old
great-coat, and an old slouching hat, and in five minutes place myself
amid the scenes of blasphemy and vice and misery, which I never could
have believed to exist if I had not seen them. So a man may walk along
Broadway, and think to himself, 'What a fine place this is! How civil
the people are! What a decent and orderly and virtuous city New York
is!'--while, at the same time, within thirty rods of him are scenes of
pollution and crime such as none but an eyewitness can adequately
imagine. I would have a minister _see_ the world for himself. _It is
rotten to the core._ Ministers ordinarily see only the brighter side of
the world. Almost everybody treats them with civility; the religious,
with peculiar kindness and attention. Hence they are apt to think too
well of the world. Lawyers, on the other hand, think too ill of it. They
see only, or for the most part, its worst side. They are brought in
contact with dishonesty and villany in their worst developments. I have
observed, in doing business with lawyers, that they are exceedingly
hawk-eyed, and jealous of everybody. The omission of a word or letter in
a will, they will scan with the closest scrutiny; and while I could see
no use for any but the most concise and simple terms to express the
wishes of the testator, a lawyer would be satisfied with nothing but the
most precise and formal instrument, stuffed full of legal _caveats_ and
technicalities."

_Mr. C._ "Which do you think excels in eloquence, the bar or the
pulpit?"

_Dr. N._ "The bar."

_Mr. C._ "To what causes do you ascribe the superiority?"

_Dr. N._ "The superior influence of things of sight over those of faith.
The nearness of objects en