“Can I see Paul there?” said he, drying the tears that stood in his eyes.

“Sartain you can.  Don’t you like that, Bob?” said Reuben, who was in the plot with Dilman.

“Well, I’ll go, then,” said the child.  “Good by, Bid; good by, Pat.  You stay there till Paul and I come to see ye.”

All the household of Reuben embraced Eugene, and made him some little present, before he set out.  An abundance of tears were shed by young and old, as the melancholy and thoughtful face of Eugene was seen by them for the last time.

Truth compels us to say a word or two in reference to the antecedents of this reverend doctor of Presbyterianism into whose protection this innocent lamb was taken.  Dr. Dilman was about sixty years old at this time; and after having lived in some manner with his first wife for near thirty years, had lately taken out a bill of divorce by law against the “old woman,” to make room for a young religious lady in his reverend bed.  During his long life, he had changed his creed no less than nine times.  He was first an Episcopalian; but having been refused ordination in that sect, on account of some peccadilloes of his youth, he joined the Methodists, from whom he received conversion and a call.  Being a man of undoubted talent, and thinking the Methodists were too slow in promoting him, he became a Baptist.  His next hop was to the Universalists, whom, because he found too penurious, he deserted for the Congregationalists, from whom he got a call to a southern pro-slavery church, where, after amassing considerable wealth in cash and “human chattels,” he resigned his charge, came to the north again to recruit his sinking constitution, and, after trying two or three other minor sects, he settled down an old-school anti-slavery Presbyterian.  Poor man! his star has gone down now, and his memory will soon be forgotten; but the anecdotes and tales that his extraordinary life illustrated will not be forgotten for generations to come.  The passage in his study, through which he used to admit his “Cressida” from a secret door communicating with his “basement church,” is now shown as a specimen of his skill.  The transformations and metamorphoses he used to undergo, like Jupiter of old, in order to pass unobserved to the retreats of his “Europas,” on the sides and on the summits of the classically-sounding hills of the city of his ministry,—­all these things, and more, are known to the poorest retailers of interesting stories and anecdotes.  In a word, he was as impure as Caligula, as cruel as Nero or Calvin himself, and as violent as Luther or John Knox.

Yet it is a melancholy fact in connection with, and illustrative of, the spirit of the Protestantisms of the United States, that for twenty years and more, with all this guilt, with all the crimes in the calendar on his head, with the full knowledge of all his sins of impurity, hypocrisy, intolerance, and cruelty to his wife, this reverend gentleman was the most popular, well-supported, and respected minister in the whole state in which he resided.  He was a good preacher, an eloquent expounder of the word, a smart man; that was enough.  Protestantism could not afford to lose him now, when she was so spare of the giants to which she owes her existence.