could all
these things, which had so individualized the natural body of Sir Joseph
Barley, be dispensed with in its spiritual counterpart? No answer to
such question,--only the grim facts, that one brother more had "gone
over to the majority," and that the living minority got on very
comfortably without him. Comfortably? Ay, truly; for in the very letter
that brought the news I was begged to spend the approaching Fast-Day in
Foxden, just as if nothing had happened. The season, so I was assured,
was unusually advanced, and already the flavor of spring was perceptible
in the air; moreover, the different congregations in town were to unite
in services at the Orthodox Church, and, by extraordinary favor, one of
the Colonel's Boston correspondents, no less a man than the
distinguished Dr. Burge, was to preach the sermon.

A noble specimen of our New-England clergy was this Dr. Burge. He held
the old creed-formulas through which Wilson and Mather declared their
faith, yet warmed them into ruddy life by whatever fire the last
transcendental Prometheus or Comte-devoted scientist filched from aerial
or material heaven. A good diner-out, a good visitor among the poor. His
parishioners supplied him with a wood-fire, a saddle-horse, and, it was
maliciously said, a boxing-master; and he, on his part,--so ran the idle
rumor of the street,--covenanted never to call upon them for cod-liver
oil, Bourbon whiskey, or a tour to Europe. In his majestic presence
there was a total impression sanative to body and soul. The full powers
of manner and tone, of pause and emphasis, were at his command. He would
rise in a shingled meeting-house as effective as choir, organ, and
sacerdotal vestments in full cathedral-service. I was glad to learn that
this stalwart servant of the Word would be at Foxden. He had formerly
been well acquainted with the Reverend Charles Clifton, late pastor of a
church in that place. He might deal wisely with the evil intelligence,
or, possibly, the infatuated egotism, which controlled that unfortunate
man. Dr. Burge would possess his soul in calmness in presence of the
singular epidemic which was then running through Foxden, as it had
previously run through, and run out of, other river-towns.

And now it has come in my way to speak of that strange murmuring of
phantoms and their attendant seers, psychometers, and dactylomancers,
which in these latter days has revived among us. And what I may have to
say about what is c