was
thoroughly independent; flattered nobody, cared for nobody, trusted
nobody. When invited to sit down at our dinner-table he invariably took
the precaution to place his basket of valuables between his legs for
safe keeping. "Never mind they basket, Jonathan," said my father;
"we shan't steal thy verses." "I 'm not sure of that," returned the
suspicious guest. "It is written, 'Trust ye not in any brother.'"

(1) "He could never come better," says the clown in
Shakespeare's _The Winter's Tale,_ when Autolycus, the
pedler, is announced; "he shall come in. I love a ballad but
even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very
pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably." Act IV. scene 4.

Thou, too, O Parson B.,--with thy pale student's brow and rubicund
nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white, flowing
locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved
when even a shirt to thy back was problematical,--art by no means to
be overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the
_entree_ of our farmhouse. Well do we remember with what grave and
dignified courtesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its
inmates with the same air of gracious condescension and patronage with
which in better days he had delighted the hearts of his parishioners.
Poor old man! He had once been the admired and almost worshipped
minister of the largest church in the town where he afterwards found
support in the winter season, as a pauper. He had early fallen into
intemperate habits; and at the age of three-score and ten, when I
remember him, he was only sober when he lacked the means of being
otherwise. Drunk or sober, however, he never altogether forgot the
proprieties of his profession; he was always grave, decorous, and
gentlemanly; he held fast the form of sound words, and the weakness of
the flesh abated nothing of the rigor of his stringent theology. He had
been a favorite pupil of the learned and astute Emmons,(1) and was to
the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar dogmas of his school.
The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting in our district
school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and travelling
companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was doubtless
the same which endeared Tam O'Shanter to the souter:(2)--

"They had been fou for weeks thegither."

He took for his text the first seven verses of the