grain that year, and hogs were brisk, and cattle lively, and all
"looking-up," in the language of the prices current. This was long
before the time when Mr. M---- made his famous gammon speeches; but
the people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the
eventful anticipations of the season, there was quite a freshet in
Salt river. The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation
was beginning to chink his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as
many railways, were about to be established; old things were about
to fleet and disappear; all things were becoming new; and the serpent
entered Charlemont, and made his way among the people thereof,
without any signs of combustion, or overthrow, or earthquake.

Everybody has some tolerable idea of what the visitation of a
parson is, to the members of his flock. In the big cities he comes
one day, and the quarterly collector the next. He sits down with
the "gude wife" in a corner to themselves, and he speaks to her in
precisely the same low tones which cunning lovers are apt to use.
If he knows any one art better than another, it is that of finding
his way to the affections of the female part of his flock. A subdued
tone of voice betrays a certain deference for the party addressed.
The lady is pleased with such a preliminary. She is flattered again
by the pains he takes in behalf of her eternal interests; she is
pretty sure he takes no such pains with any of her neighbors. It
is a sign that he thinks her soul the most becoming little soul in
the flock, and when he goes away, she looks after him and sighs,
and thinks him the most blessed soul of a parson. The next week
she is the first to get up a subscription which she heads with her
own name in connection with a sum realized by stinting her son of
his gingerbread money, in order to make this excellent parson a
life-member of the "Zion African Bible and Missionary Society, for