"Well, one of your profession ought to be charitable. But I might naturally expect to be disapproved of by one so good and wise as you are."
"Why do you think me 'good and wise'?"
"Because you are a minister, if for no other reason."
"I am also a man."
"Yes," she said innocently. "You are quite grown up."
He looked at her quickly; her demure face puzzled him, and he said,
"I fear you think I am overgrown."
"And I fear you don't care what I think. Men of your profession are superior to the world."
"Really, I shall think you are sarcastic, if you talk in that way any more." But she looked so serious that he half believed she was in earnest.
"Are ministers like other men?" she asked, with a spice of genuine curiosity in her question. The venerable pastor of the church which she attended in New York had not seemed to belong to the same race as herself. His hair was so white, his face so bloodless, his life so saintly, and his sermons so utterly beyond her, that he appeared as dim and unearthly as one of the Christian Fathers. A young theologian on the way to that same ghostly state was an object of piquant interest. She had never had a flirtation with a man of this character, therefore there was all the zest of novelty. Had she been less fearless, she would have shrunk from it, however, with something of the superstitious dread that many have of jesting in a church, or a graveyard. But there was a trace of hardihood in her present course that just took her fancy. From lack of familiarity with the class, she had a vague impression that ministers differed widely from other men, and to bring one down out of the clouds as a fluttering captive at her feet would be a triumph indeed. A little awe mingled with her curiosity as she sought to penetrate the scholastic and saintly atmosphere in which she supposed even an embryo clergyman dwelt. She hardly knew what to say when, in reply to her question, "Are ministers like other men?" he asked, "Why not?"
"That is hardly a fair way to answer."