statements of things, his occasional literary felicity and unusual tact,
might have made him distinguished in a more cultured community. Yet
there was something to modify all this: an occasional indefinable
sadness, a constant note of pathetic warning. It struck me that I never
had met a man whose words and manner were at times so charged with
pathos; it was artistic in its searching simplicity. There was some
unfathomable fount in his nature which was even beyond any occurrence of
his past; some radical, constitutional sorrow, coupled with a very
strong, practical, and even vigorous nature.

One of his most ardent admirers was a gambler, horse-trader, and watch-
dealer, who sold him a horse, and afterwards came and offered him thirty
dollars, saying that the horse was worth that much less than Roscoe had
paid for it, and protesting that he never could resist the opportunity of
getting the best of a game. He said he did not doubt but that he would
do the same with one of the archangels. He afterwards sold Roscoe a
watch at cost, but confessed to me that the works of the watch had been
smuggled. He said he was so fond of the parson that he felt he had to
give him a chance of good things. It was not uncommon for him to
discourse of Roscoe's quality in the bar-rooms of Sunburst and Viking,
in which he was ably seconded by Phil Boldrick, an eccentric, warm-
hearted fellow, who was so occupied in the affairs of the villages
generally, and so much an advisory board to the authorities, that he
had little time left to progress industrially himself.

Once when a noted bully came to Viking, and, out of sheer bravado and
meanness, insulted Roscoe in the streets, two or three river-drivers came
forward to avenge the insult. It was quite needless, for the clergyman
had promptly taken the case in his own hands. Waving them back, he said
to the bully: "I have no weapon, and if I had, I could not take your