We find here and there records of pleasant little encounters of humor among them on these points.  Parson Deane, of Portland, was a precise man, and always appeared in the clerical regalia of the times, with powdered wig, cocked hat, gown, bands.  Parson Hemmenway went about with just such clothes as he happened to find convenient, without the least regard to the conventional order.

Being together on a council.  Dr. Deane playfully remarked,—­

“The ferryman, Brother Hemmenway, as we came over, hadn’t the least idea you were a clergyman.  Now I am particular always to appear with my wig on.”

“Precisely,” said Dr. Hemmenway; “I know it is well to bestow more abundant honor on the part that lacketh.”

It is a curious illustration of the times and people to see how quietly the personal eccentricities of a good minister were received.

One Mr. Moody, who flourished in the State of Maine, was one of those born oddities whose growth of mind rejects every outward rule.  Brilliant, original, restless, he found it impossible to bring his thoughts to march in the regular platoon and file of a properly written sermon.  It is told of him, that, moved by the admiration of his people for the calm and orderly performances of one of his neighboring brethren of the name of Emerson, he resolved to write a sermon in the same style.  After the usual introductory services, he began to read his performance, but soon grew weary, stumbled disconsolately, and at last stopped, exclaiming,—­“Emerson must be Emerson, and Moody must be Moody!  I feel as if I had my head in a bag!  You call Moody a rambling preacher;—­it is true enough; but his preaching will do to catch rambling sinners, and you are all runaways from the Lord.”

His clerical brethren at a meeting of the Association once undertook to call him to account for his odd expressions and back-handed strokes.  He stepped into his study and produced a record of some twenty or thirty cases of conversions which had resulted from some of his exceptional sayings.  As he read them over with the dates, they looked at each other with surprise, and one of them very sensibly remarked, “If the Lord owns Father Moody’s oddities, we must let him take his own way.”

His son, Joseph Moody, furnished the original incident which Hawthorne has so exquisitely worked up in his story of “The Minister’s Black Veil.”  Being of a singularly nervous and melancholic temperament, he actually for many years shrouded his face with a black handkerchief.  When reading a sermon he would lift this, but stood with his back to the audience so that his face was concealed,—­all which appears to have been accepted by his people with sacred simplicity.  He was known in the neighborhood by the name of Handkerchief Moody.

It is recorded also of the venerable and eccentric Father Mills, of Torringford, that, on the death of his much beloved wife, he was greatly exercised as to how a minister who always dressed in black could sufficiently express his devotion and respect for the departed by any outward change of dress.  At last he settled the question to his own satisfaction, by substituting for his white wig a black silk pocket-handkerchief, with which head-dress he officiated in all simplicity during the usual term of mourning.