n in the town, he had acquired by his
reading, and still more by his experience, enough knowledge in both
these departments to enable him to administer to the ordinary wants of a
very healthy and peaceable people.

It was said that most of the deeds and legal conveyances in his parish
were in his handwriting, and in the medical line his authority was only
rivaled by that of Miss Roxy, who claimed a very obvious advantage over
him in a certain class of cases, from the fact of her being a woman,
which was still further increased by the circumstance that the good man
had retained steadfastly his bachelor estate. "So, of course," Miss Roxy
used to say, "poor man! what could he know about a woman, you know?"

This state of bachelorhood gave occasion to much surmising; but when
spoken to about it, he was accustomed to remark with gallantry, that he
should have too much regard for any lady whom he could think of as a
wife, to ask her to share his straitened circumstances. His income,
indeed, consisted of only about two hundred dollars a year; but upon
this he and a very brisk, cheerful maiden sister contrived to keep up a
thrifty and comfortable establishment, in which everything appeared to
be pervaded by a spirit of quaint cheerfulness.

In fact, the man might be seen to be an original in his way, and all the
springs of his life were kept oiled by a quiet humor, which sometimes
broke out in playful sparkles, despite the gravity of the pulpit and the
awfulness of the cocked hat. He had a placid way of amusing himself with
the quaint and picturesque side of life, as it appeared in all his
visitings among a very primitive, yet very shrewd-minded people.

There are those people who possess a peculiar faculty of mingling in the
affairs of this life as spectators as well as actors. It does not, of
course, suppose any coldness of nature or want of human interest or
sympathy--nay, it often exists most completely with people of the
tenderest human feeling. It rather seems to be a kind of distinct
faculty working harmoniously with all the others; but he who possesses
it needs never to be at a loss for interest or amusement; he is always a
spectator at a tragedy or comedy, and sees in real life a humor and a
pathos beyond anything he can find shadowed in books.

Mr. Sewell sometimes, in his pastoral visitations, took a quiet pleasure
in playing upon these simple minds, and amusing himself with the odd
harmonies and singular resolut