"I am the village atheist," he told me shortly after we met. But evidently the voters of Summers County, West Virginia, didn't mind. They twice elected him prosecuting attorney and to the West Virginia legislature. His daughter has also been twice elected prosecuting attorney. To Hinton in Summers County, I had made a pilgrimage to meet a man whose every op-ed in the Charleston Gazette caught and held my attention. I might say his idealism appealed to me, but Perry Mann isn't an idealist--he lived and appreciated an ideal life and based his essays on his life experience. Perry Mann has been...