dy who knew him, invariably
called him (when he wasn't by) Hicok-alorum. This charming surname had
been conferred on him by a crazy old fellow with whom he once got into
a dispute. Lunatics have the most awfully tricky ways of dodging out
of pinches in reasoning; but Hicok knew too much to know _that_; and
so he acquired his fine title to teach him one thing more.

Trebly liable, we said. The three reasons are,--

1. He was foreign-born.
2. He was a Scotchman.
3. He was a physician and surgeon.

The way in which these causes operated was as follows (I wish it were
allowable to use Artemas Ward's curiously satisfactory vocable
"thusly:" like Mrs. Wiggle's soothing syrup, it "supplies a real
want"):--

Being foreign-born, Dr. Hicok had not the unfailing moral stamina of a
native American, and therefore was comparatively easily beset by sin.
Being, secondly, a Scotchman, he was not only thoroughly conceited,
with a conceit as immovable as the Bass Rock, just as other folks
sometimes are, but, in particular, he was perfectly sure of his utter
mastery of metaphysics, logic and dialectics, or, as he used to call
it, with a snobbish Teutonicalization, _dialektik_. Now, in the latter
two, the Scotch can do something, but in metaphysics they are simply
imbecile; which quality, in the inscrutable providence of God, has
been joined with an equally complete conviction of the exact opposite.
Let not man, therefore, put those traits asunder--not so much by
reason of any divine ordinance, as because no man in his senses would
try to convince a Scotchman--or anybody else, for that matter.

Thirdly, he was a physician and surgeon; and gentlemen of this
profession are prone to become either thoroughgoing materialists, or
else implicit and extreme Calvinistic Presbyterians, "of the large
blue kind." And they are, moreover, positive, hard-headed, bold, and
self-confident. So they have good need to be. Did not Majendie say to
his students, "Gentlemen, disease is a subject which physicians know
nothing about"?

So the doctor both believed in the existence of a personal devil, and
believed in his own ability to get the upper hand of that individual
in a tournament of the wits. Ah, he learned better by terrible
experience! The doctor was a dry-looking little chap, with sandy hair,
a freckled face, small grey eyes, and absurd white eyebrows and
eyelashes, which made him look as if he had finished off his toilet
with just a light