“The bulliest spree I ever went on--the _very_ bulliest!” CHAPTER XI. DOCTORS AND BOYS. Here were two elements of Barton society with which Mr. Crupp had not been so successful as he had hoped; these were the doctors, and that elastic body known as “the boys.” Individually, the physicians had promised well at first; all of them but one were members of the Barton Division of the Sons of Temperance, and the Division rooms afforded the only floor upon which Dr. White, the allopathist, Dr. Perry, the homeopathist, and Dr. Pykem, the water-cure physician, ever could meet amicably, for they belonged to separate churches. Old Dr. Matthews, who had retired from practice, was not a “Son,” only because he was a conscientious opponent of secret societies; but he had signed every public pledge ever circulated in Barton, and he had never drunk a drop of liquor in his life. All the physicians freely admitted to Mr. Crupp that alcohol was a never-failing cause of disease, or at least of physical deterioration; all declared that no class of maladies were so incurable, and so depressing to the spirits of the medical practitioner, as those to which habitual drinkers, even those who were never drunk, were subject; but--they really did not see what more they, the physicians of Barton, could do than they were already doing. Crupp discussed the matter with Parson Wedgewell, and the parson volunteered to preach a sermon to physicians from the text, “Give wine unto those that be of heavy hearts,” a text which had suggested itself to him, or, rather, had been providentially suggested to him on the occasion of his very first interview with Crupp, and which was outlined in his mind in a manner suggestive of delightful subtleties and a startling application. But when Crupp sounded the doctors as to whether such a discourse would be agreeable, Dr. White said he would be glad to listen to the eloquent divine; but he was conscientiously opposed to appearing, even by the faintest implication, to admit that the homeopathist was a physician at all. Dr. Perry felt his need, as a partaker in the fall of Adam, to being preached to from any portion of the inspired Word; but he could not sit in an audience to which such a humbug as Pykem could be admitted in an official capacity; while Dr. Pykem said that he would rejoice to encourage the preacher by his presence, if he thought any amount of preaching would do any good to a remorseless slaughterer like White, or an idiotic old potterer like Perry. Then Mr. Crupp tried another plan: he himself organized a meeting in which the exercises were to consist of short addresses upon the physical bearing of intemperance, the addresses to be made by “certain of our fellow-citizens who have had many opportunities for special observation in this direction.” Even then Drs. White and Perry objected to sitting on the same platform with Dr. Pykem, who had never attended any medical school of any sort, and who would probably