to the office and the parsonage of the Reverend Didymus Bean, before mentioned, but not suspected of any of his alleged heresies.  He held to the old faith of the Puritans, and occasionally delivered a discourse which was considered by the hard-headed theologians of his parish to have settled the whole matter fully and finally, so that now there was a good logical basis laid down for the Millennium, which might begin at once upon the platform of his demonstrations.  Yet the Reverend Dr. Honeywood was fonder of preaching plain, practical sermons about the duties of life, and showing his Christianity in abundant good works among his people.  It was noticed by some few of his flock, not without comment, that the great majority of his texts came from the Gospels, and this more and more as he became interested in various benevolent enterprises which brought him into relations with-ministers and kindhearted laymen of other denominations.  He was in fact a man of a very warm, open, and exceedingly human disposition, and, although bred by a clerical father, whose motto was “Sit anima mea cum Puritanis,” he exercised his human faculties in the harness of his ancient faith with such freedom that the straps of it got so loose they did not interfere greatly with the circulation of the warm blood through his system.  Once in a while he seemed to think it necessary to come out with a grand doctrinal sermon, and them he would lapse away for a while into preaching on men’s duties to each other and to society, and hit hard, perhaps, at some of the actual vices of the time and place, and insist with such tenderness and eloquence on the great depth and breadth of true Christian love and charity, that his oldest deacon shook his head, and wished he had shown as much interest when he was preaching, three Sabbaths back, on Predestination, or in his discourse against the Sabellians.  But he was sound in the faith; no doubt of that.  Did he not preside at the council held in the town of Tamarack, on the other side of the mountain, which expelled its clergyman for maintaining heretical doctrines?  As presiding officer, he did not vote, of course, but there was no doubt that he was all right; he had some of the Edwards blood in him, and that couldn’t very well let him go wrong.

The meeting-house on the other and opposite summit was of a more modern style, considered by many a great improvement on the old New England model, so that it is not uncommon for a country parish to pull down its old meeting-house, which has been preached in for a hundred years or so, and put up one of these more elegant edifices.  The new building was in what may be called the florid shingle-Gothic manner.  Its pinnacles and crockets and other ornaments were, like the body of the building, all of pine wood,—­an admirable material, as it is very soft and easily worked, and can be painted of any color desired.  Inside, the walls were stuccoed in imitation of stone,—­first a dark brown square, then two light brown squares,