42 BUFFALO LAND. 



short His favorite theory was "development," and 

 this he carried to depths which would have astonished 

 Darwin himself. How humble he used to make us 

 feel by digging- at the roots of the family tree until its 

 uttermost fiber lay between an oyster and a sponge 1 

 (Rumor charged him with waiting so long for diseases 

 to develop, that his patients developed into spirits.) 

 While he indorsed Darwin, however, he also admired 

 Pythagoras. The latter's doctrine of metempsychosis 

 .he Darwinized. In their transmigration from one 

 body to another, souls developed, taking a higher or- 

 der of being with each change, until finally fitted to 

 enter the land of spirits. The soul of a jack-of-all- 

 trades was one which developed slowly, and picked 

 up a new craft with each new body. Like Pythag- 

 oras, he remembered several previous bodies which 

 his soul had animated, among others that of the orig- 

 inal Rarey, who existed in Egpyt some centuries be- 

 fore the modern usurper was born. If souls proved 

 entirely unworthy during the probationary or human 

 period, they were cast back into the brute creation to 

 try it over again. To this class belonged prize-fight- 

 ers, Congressmen, and the like. With them the past 

 was a blank — an unsuccessful problem washed from 

 the slate. The doctor had a hobby that a vicious 

 horse was only a vicious man entered into a lower or- 

 der of being. To demonstrate this he had traveled, 

 and still persisted in traveling, on eccentric horses, 

 for the purpose of reasoning with them. But his 

 Egyptian lore had been lost in transmission, and his 

 falls, kicks, and bites became as many as the moons 

 which had passed over his head. 



