, by substituting for his white wig a black silk
pocket-handkerchief, with which head-dress he officiated in all
simplicity during the usual term of mourning.

We think it one result of their great freedom from any strait-laced
conventional ideas, that no point of character is more frequently
noticed in the subjects of these sketches than wit and humor. New
England ministers never held it a sin to laugh; if they did, some of
them had a great deal to answer for; for they could scarce open their
mouths without dropping some provocation to a smile. An ecclesiastical
meeting was always a merry season; for there never were wanting quaint
images, humorous anecdotes, and sharp flashes of wit, and even the
driest and most metaphysical points of doctrine were often lit up and
illuminated by these corruscations.

A panel taken out of the house of the Rev. John Lowell, of Newbury, is
still preserved, representing the common style of an ecclesiastical
meeting in those days. The divines, each in full wig and gown, are
seated around a table, smoking their pipes, and above is the well-known
inscription: _In necessariis, Unitas: in non necessariis, Libertas: in
utrisque Charitas_.

In that delightfully naive and simple journal of the Rev. Thomas Smith,
the first minister settled in Portland, Maine, in the year 1725, we find
the following entries.

"July 4, 1763. Mr. Brooks was ordained. A multitude of people from my
parish. A decent solemnity."

"January 16, 1765. Mr. Foxcroft was ordained at New Gloucester. We had a
pleasant journey home. Mr. L. was alert and kept us all merry. A jolly
ordination. We lost sight of decorum."

This Mr. L., by the by, who was so alert on this occasion, it appears by
a note, was Stephen Longfellow, the great-grandfather of the poet.
Those who enjoy the poet's acquaintance will probably testify that the
property of social alertness has not evaporated from the family in the
lapse of so many years.

It is recorded of Dr. Griffin, that, when President of the Andover
Theological Seminary, he convened the students at his room one evening,
and told them he had observed that they were all growing thin and
dyspeptical from a neglect of the exercise of Christian laughter, and he
insisted upon it that they should go through a company-drill in it then
and there. The Doctor was an immense man,--over six feet in height, with
great amplitude of chest and most magisterial manners. "Here," said he
to the first, "