Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/204

186 unfortunately fixed him for visiting his mother on crutches the balance of his life.

One thing I will say for the Virginians—I never knew one of them, under any pressure, to extemporize a profession. The



sentiment of reverence for the mysteries of medicine and law was too large for deliberate quackery; as to the pulpit, a man might as well do his starving without the hypocrisy. But others were not so nice. I have known them to rush, when the wolf