"Then a patent medicine vender?"
"No!" emphatically.
"Not a minister," he asserted. "Perhaps a doctor," he perseveringly
continued.
"Yes, sir; I am a physician."
"O! ah! indeed! I am rejoiced to learn it. Give me your hand, sir," he
exclaimed, rising and reaching his enormous palm across the table. "I am
rejoiced, as I said before, to meet a brother."
"A _brother_!" I repeated, with unfeigned surprise and disgust.
"Yes, a brother! I, too, am a doctor. I have the honor," etc., for the
next ten minutes, while I hastened to finish my supper.