preacher by our good pastor, who was much afflicted with what Mrs.
Partington calls "brown creeturs." He had harped on one string of his
vocal apparatus so long that like Jeshuran of old "it waxed fat and
kicked." Exceedingly monotonous and soporific was his voice, and it
was necessary to strain every nerve to tell whether he was preaching,
praying or reading, the words were much the same in each case.

The long cramming of Hebrew, Greek, Latin and all things dead had
driven out all the vim and enthusiasm of his youth; the dry-as-dust
drill of the theological institution had filled his mind with
arguments for the destruction of all other denominations to the entire
exclusion of all common sense. He forcibly reminded me of the Scotch
dominie who stopped at the stove to shake off the water one rainy
morning, and to rebuke the sexton for not having a fire. "Niver mind,
yer Riverince," replied the indignant serving man, "ye'll be dry
enough soon as ye begin praiching."

One hot Sunday when our clergyman was droning away as usual, a
well-to-do fat brother, who once said he had such entire confidence in
our clergyman's orthodoxy that he didn't feel obliged to keep awake
to watch him, commenced to snore like a fog horn, nearly drowning the
speaker's voice. The reverend stopped, and thinking innocently, that
some animal was making the disturbance, said: "Will the sexton please
put that dog out." This aroused fatty, who left the church in a rage,
and his subscription was lost forever.

Our pious pastor was a fair sample of the "wooden men" turned out by
the educational mills of the day; to an assembly of whom Edwin Booth
is reported to have said: "The difference between the theatre and the
church is this, you preach the gospel as if it were fiction, while