carted him to her home. He turned out to be a long Methodist parson,
named Huggins.

Aside from his unconscionable length, the Rev. Berosus Huggins was not
so bad a fellow, and was nobody's fool. He was, I suppose, the most
ill-favored mortal, however, in the whole northern half of
America--thin, angular, cadaverous of visage and solemn out of all
reason. He commonly wore a low-crowned black hat, set so far down upon
his head as partly to eclipse his eyes and wholly obscure the ample
glory of his ears. The only other visible article of his attire (except
a brace of wrinkled cowskin boots, by which the word "polish" would have
been considered the meaningless fragment of a lost language) was a
tight-fitting black frock-coat, preternaturally long in the waist, the
skirts of which fell about his heels, sopping up the dew. This he always
wore snugly buttoned from the throat downward. In this attire he cut a
tolerably spectral figure. His aspect was so conspicuously unnatural and
inhuman that whenever he went into a cornfield, the predatory crows
would temporarily forsake their business to settle upon him in swarms,
fighting for the best seats upon his person, by way of testifying their
contempt for the weak inventions of the husbandman.

The day after the wedding my Aunt Patience summoned the Rev. Berosus to
the council chamber, and uttered her mind to the following intent:

"Now, Huggy, dear, I'll tell you what there is to do about the place.
First, you must repair all the fences, clearing out the weeds and
repressing the brambles with a strong hand. Then you will have to
exterminate the Canadian thistles, mend the wagon, rig up a plow or two,
and get things into ship-shape generally. This will keep you out of
mischief for the better part of two years; of course you will have to