Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/143

 confidence, was nothing more nor less than an impostor. Yet impostor that he was, he was first of all his own dupe. Homœopathy had but lately come into vogue, and the apparent simplicity of its principles had made it, or an unworthy travesty of it, instantly popular. Especially among New England housewives, who like to feel themselves equal to every emergency, the little wooden cases of bottles filled with palatable remedies for every ill, were welcome possessions.

"Why," Anson's mother had said, "it's just like the way Luther gave the Bible to the people! Think how long the priests had kept the religious doctorin' all to themselves."

The good woman had an ill-defined notion that doctrine and doctorin' had more similarity than that of mere sound. "I tell you, it's jest the same with the doctors. It's nothing but self-glorification that's always made'em so secret about their learnin'. The Lord sets 'em a better example than that. The Lord promises to help folks that help themselves. But you'd think, to hear the allopaths talk, that a woman was committing some awful crime, when she gave a little nux vomica to a child that's got the snuffles, instead of running up a doctor's bill and being made to torture the poor little thing with nasty-tasting drugs."

Jane Bennett was, as her simple-minded husband took pride in remembering, a Pratt of Dunbridge, and she had inherited something of