uire was a thorough-going
Jeffersonian Democrat, and the Deacon a warm Federalist, so far as the
poor man could be warm at anything, who was on the alert every hour of
his life to escape the hammer of his wife's reproaches.

So it happened that the parish was called together, and an invitation
extended to Brother Johns to continue his ministrations for a month
further. Of course the novitiate understood this to be the crucial test;
and he accepted it with a composure, and a lack of impertinent effort to
please them overmuch, which altogether charmed them. On four successive
Saturdays he drove over to Ashfield,--sometimes stopping with one or the
other of the two deacons, and at other times with Squire Elderkin,--and
on one or two occasions taking his wife by special invitation. Of her,
too, the people of Ashfield had but one opinion: that she was of a
ductile temper was most easy to be seen; and there was not a
strong-minded woman of the parish but anticipated with delight the power
and pleasure of moulding her to her wishes. The husband continued to
preach agreeably to their notions of orthodoxy, and at the end of the
month they gave him a "call," with the promise of four hundred dollars a
year, besides sundry odds and ends made up by donation visits and
otherwise.

This sum, which was not an inconsiderable one for those days, enabled
the clergyman to rent as a parsonage the old house we have seen, with
the big brazen knocker, and diamond lights in either half of its green
door. It stood under the shade of two huge ashes, at a little remove
back from the street, and within easy walk from the central common. A
heavy dentilated cornice, from which the paint was peeling away in flaky
patches, hung over the windows of the second floor. Within the door was
a little entry--(for years and years the pastor's hat and cane used to
lie upon a table that stood just within the door); from the entry a
cramped stairway, by three sharp angles, led to the floor above. To the
right and left were two low parlors. The sun was shining broadly in the
south one when the couple first entered the house.

"Good!" said Rachel, with her pleasant, brisk tone,--"this shall be your
study, Benjamin; the bookcase here, the table there, a nice warm carpet,
we'll paper it with blue, the Major's sword shall be hung over the
mantel."

"Tut! tut!" says the clergyman, "a sword, Rachel,--in my study?"

"To be sure! why not?" says Rachel. "And if you lik