afford time for vain talk.  The secret of this is, that he breathes an atmosphere of his own; his soul is like a star, and dwells apart.  Behold him seated at his table, jotting down casual thoughts on the backs of letters and scraps of paper (for paper is very dear); he is building up some great argument, whose vast proportions will in due time be developed, like the uncovering of a colossus.  Beware, Mr. Solomon Williams of Hatfield, and you, Chubb and Tyndal, and John Taylor of Norwich, for you will each and all of you find your master in this secluded parson.  Thirteen hours per day are given to study, and this has been the average for years.

And such study to create realities out of the fogs of metaphysics, and to span the concrete and the abstract with a bridge such as Milton threw across space.  This man can spend hours in pursuit of ‘volitions’ with all the excitement of the chamois-hunt.  Now his eye brightens, for he has transfixed an idea, and holds it up in all the nicety of artistic touch, while he dissects it to its ramifications.  It is all con amore with him, though his readers will need a clue to the maze of intricate reasoning.

One can not pass through the streets of Northampton, so broad, so rural, and so picturesque, without being overshadowed by that memory, which may be expressed in the sweet lines of Longfellow,—­

  ’Here in patience and in sorrow, laboring still with busy hand,
  Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the better land.’

It is gratifying to know that his memory is honored in Northampton by the naming of a church, though all may not understand the connection.  The old ‘meeting-house’ (for the Puritans used the word church only in a spiritual sense) stood fronting the site of the present enormous edifice.  It was torn down in 1812.  Here for nearly a quarter of a century the tall form, and face pale and meagre from intense thinking, appeared each Sabbath before a people among whom his recluse habits rendered him almost a stranger.  Here, having rested upon the desk, upon the elbow of his left arm, whose hand held a tiny book of closely written MS., he read with stooping form and low tones those solemn arguments and tremendous appeals which now thrill us from the printed page.  Each of those tiny books was a sermon.  Many of these are still preserved, and Dr. Tryon Edwards, of New London, has a chest filled with these memorials of his great ancestor.  They are written in so fine a hand as to be hardly legible except to one practiced in their deciphering—­a result of the extreme economy of one who, with all carefulness, was the largest consumer of paper and ink in New England.  Solemn as was the deportment of this reverend man, sundry practical jokes at his expense are on record.  It is said that the house dog was his close attendant, and on Sabbath day would invade even the pulpit in search of his master.  Hence he was carefully fastened during ’holy time.’  On one occasion, however, some wag not only loosed the animal, but actually garnished his neck with a pair of ministerial bands.  The poor dog, unwitting of his sacred insignia, made his way into the pulpit without being noticed by his absent minded master, until some one showed him the dog, a la parson, perched up behind him on the pulpit bench.