h I relate as her narrative, and not
as part of my recollections. The procession from the parsonage, the
disappearance of the people on the appearance of the procession, and
that their pastor was received with every mark of decorum and respect,
I well remember, but of their rising at his entrance and standing after
the service until he had departed, I have no recollection; my time was
almost twenty years after that narrated by Mrs. Dowse. During that
period the Revolution had commenced."

Some might think it an advantage, if more of the decorum and reverence
of such a state of society had been preserved to our day; for this
respect paid to the minister was but part of a general and all-pervading
system. Children were more reverential to their parents, scholars to
their teachers, the people to their magistrates. A want of reverence
threatens now to become the besetting sin of America, whether young or
old.

The clergy of New England have, as a body, been distinguished for a rare
union of the speculative and the practical. In both points they have
been so remarkable, that in observing the great development of either of
these qualities by itself one would naturally suppose that there was no
room for the other.

Generally speaking, they were rural pastors,--living on salaries so
small as to afford hardly a nominal support; and in order to bring up
their families and give their sons a college education, it was necessary
to understand fully the practical _savoir faire_. Accordingly, they
farmed and gardened, and often took young people into their families to
educate, and in these ways eked out a subsistence. It is related of the
venerable Moses Hallock, that he educated in his own family, during his
ministerial lifetime, three hundred young people, of whom thirty were
females. One hundred and thirty-two of these he fitted for college;
fifty became ministers, and six foreign missionaries.

Some of the clergy gained such an acquaintance with the practice of
medicine as to be able sometimes to unite the offices of physician of
the body and of the soul; and not unfrequently a general knowledge
of law enabled the pastor to be the worldly as well as the spiritual
counsellor of his people. A striking case in point is that of the
venerable Parson Eaton, who resided in a lonely seafaring district
on the coast of Maine, and preached to a congregation who lived the
amphibious life of farmers and fishermen. The town of Harpswell, whe