Poor old
man! He had once been the admired and almost worshipped minister of the
largest church in the town where he afterwards found support in the
winter season as a pauper. He had early fallen into intemperate habits;
and at the age of threescore and ten, when I remember him, he was only
sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise. Drunk or sober,
however, he never altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession;
he was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of
sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor
of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil of the learned
and astute Emmons, and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar
dogmas of his school. The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting
in our district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and
travelling companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was
doubtless the same which endeared Tam O'Shanter to the souter:--
"They had been fou for weeks thegither."
He took for his text the first seven verses of the concluding chapter of
Ecclesiastes, furnishing in himself its fitting illustration. The evil
days had come; the keepers of the house trembled; the windows of life
were darkened. A few months later the silver cord was loosened, the
golden bowl was broken, and between the poor old man and the temptations
which beset him fell the thick curtains of the grave.
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