problematical,--art by no means to be overlooked in the muster-
roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the *entree* of our
farmhouse. Well do we remember with what grave and
dignified courtesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its
inmates with the same air of gracious condescension and
patronage with which in better days he had delighted the hearts
of his parishioners. 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 three-score 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,(1) 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:(2)--

"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