“I should as soon think,” said the Rev. Increase, “of building a verandah before a wood-house, or putting mahogany doors into my old toppling down church.”

The remark was not very complimentary, but great freedom of speech prevails between us, and I took no offence; especially as I knew that the Rev. gentleman was smarting under a disappointment in the sale of a volume of sermons, whence he had expected great things, from the publication of which I had vainly endeavored to dissuade him, and whose meagre proceeds fully justified my forebodings.  The mention of my work naturally recalled this afflictive dispensation, and hinc illae lacrimae.  Reading his mind, I answered, therefore, as gently as a slight tremor in my voice would allow, that there was no accounting for tastes, and that as trifling a thing as a song had been known to outlive a sermon.

I declare I meant no harm, but his reverence (one of the best men in the world, but who, in every sense of the word, belongs to the “church militant,”) instantly blazed up—­

“I dare say,” he said, bitterly, “that you understand the frippery taste of this trivial age better than I. A capability to appreciate solid reading, reading that cultivates the understanding while it amends the heart, seems to be with the forgotten learning before the flood.  They who pander to this diseased appetite have much to answer for; not,” he was pleased to add—­his indignation cooling off like a steam-boiler which has found vent, “that the trifle on which for the last few months you have been wasting your time has not a certain kind of merit, but it seems a pity, that one, capable of better things, should so miserably misapply his powers.”

These sentiments were not entirely new to me, else I might have become a little excited; for, during the whole time while I was engaged in the composition of the work, my friend, who is, also, in the habit of communicating his literary enterprises to me, would insist upon my reading him the chapters, as fast as they came along, manifesting no little curiosity in the manner in which I should disengage myself from difficulties in which he supposed me from time to time involved, and exuberant delight at the ingenious contrivances, as, in a complimentary mood, he once said, by which I eluded them.  It is true, all this betrayal of interest was accompanied by various pishes and pshaws, and lamentations over the trifling character of my pursuits; but, like too many others, both in his cloth and out of it, his conduct contradicted his language, and I was encouraged by the former, while I only smiled at the latter.

“If such be your opinion,” said I, suddenly seizing the manuscript, which lay before me, and making a motion to throw it into the fire; “if such be your candid opinion, I had better destroy the nonsense at once.”