ther he was
ours,) to whom he had so often condescended on the Saturday evening to
hum, whistle, and too-too over the tune--of his own composing--that was
to be the admiration of the whole parish on the succeeding day--we were
henceforth to be as the uninitiated, and left to find out, and follow,
as we best might, the very eccentric windings of his Sunday's asthmatic
performance; which always went at the rate of three crotchets and a
cough, to the end of the psalm, which he took care should be an especial
long one.

Poor old man! we see him now, with his unruly troop of Sunday scholars
(in training for some important festival, to the due celebration of
which their labours were essential) singing, bawling we should say, out
of time and tune, to the utter discomfiture of his irritable temper,
(there is nothing like a false note for throwing your musical man into a
perfect tantrum,) and the bringing down on their unlucky heads a smart
tap with the bow of his violin, which led the harmony. There they stood
with their brown cheeks and white heads, fine specimens of the
agricultural interest; each one of them looking as if he could bolt a
poor, half-starved factory child at a mouthful--but certainly no
singers. It was beyond the power even of the accomplished old clerk
himself to make then such--an oyster, with its mouth full of sand, would
have sung quite as well; but still he laboured on with might and
main--with closed eyes, and open mouth--delightedly beating time with
his head, as long as matters went on not intolerably; for David's
musical soul supplied the deficiency in the sounds that entered his
unwearied ears. And then he sang so loud himself, that he certainly
could hear no one else, his voice being as monopolizing as the drone of
a bagpipe--or as a violent advocate for free trade! Happy urchins when
this was the case! for they were sure to be dismissed with the most
flattering encomiums on their vocal powers, when, if truth must be told,
the good old man had not heard a note.

But he is gathered to his fathers, and now sleeps beneath the sod in the
quiet churchyard of----. We well remember his funeral. 'Twas a lovely
day in spring when the long, lifeless trees and fields were bursting
into all the glory of May--for May was spring then, and not, as now,
cousin-german to winter; while the gay sunbeams played lovingly, like
youth caressing age, on the low church-tower, gilding the ivy that waved
in wild luxuriance