This propensity of the doctor
sometimes led to startling surprises and results, and, once at least, to
a discovery of weighty consequence--as we shall soon perceive.
It was novelty for me, and under the circumstances often quite
refreshing, to witness the manner in which Americans treated the mighty
subjects of life, and spoke of the great and powerful persons of the
earth. It was an abundant source of entertainment for me to ask almost
anybody with whom I happened to be conversing, for his opinion on some
great subject or of some noted personage; for the reply was always to me
unique, sometimes very amusing, and not infrequently instructive. On the
way for the second time from our evening meal to my room, I stopped for
a moment in the "Gentlemen's sitting-room," where I in part overheard a
conversation between an elderly and a middle-aged man. I afterward
learned that the younger man was a lawyer, by name Lill; that he was
well known throughout the State, a man of cultivation, very conventional
in his private life, but an unequivocal dissenter on almost every great
social question; a man of high honor, and unquestionable personal
habits, for whom exalted public office had often waited if only he could
have modified his expressed opinions to less inharmony with those of men
who held the reins of power.
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