pulpit-furniture, none of his living brethren, and but few dead
ones, would have been worthy even to pronounce a benediction after
him. Such pounding and expounding the moment he began to grow
warm, such slapping with his open palm, thumping with his closed
fist, and banging with the whole weight of the great Bible,
convinced me that he held, in imagination, either the Old Nick or
some Unitarian infidel at bay, and belabored his unhappy cushion as
proxy for those abominable adversaries. Nothing but this exercise
of the body while delivering his sermons could have supported the
good parson's health under the mental toil which they cost him in
composition.

Though Parson Thumpcushion had an upright heart, and some called it
a warm one, he was invariably stern and severe, on principle, I
suppose, to me. With late justice, though early enough, even now,
to be tinctured with generosity I acknowledge him to have been a
good and wise man after his own fashion. If his management failed
as to myself, it succeeded with his three sons; nor, I must frankly
say, could any mode of education with which it was possible for him
to be acquainted have made me much better than what I was or led me
to a happier fortune than the present. He could neither change the
nature that God gave me nor adapt his own inflexible mind to my
peculiar character. Perhaps it was my chief misfortune that I had
neither father nor mother alive; for parents have an instinctive
sagacity in regard to the welfare of their children, and the child
feels a confidence both in the wisdom and affection of his parents
which he cannot transfer to any delegate of their duties, however
conscientious. An orphan's fate is hard, be he rich or poor. As
for Parson Thumpcushion, whenever I see the old gentleman in my
dreams he looks kindly and sorrowfully at me, holding out his hand