There was no sort of warning on the part of the natural to the moral world, on the day when Alfred Stevens set forth with the worthy John Cross, to visit the flock of the latter. There was not a lovelier morning in the whole calendar. The sun was alone in heaven, without a cloud; and on earth, the people in and about Charlemont, having been to church only the day before, necessarily made their appearance everywhere with petticoats and pantaloons tolerably clean and unrumpled. Cabbages had not yet been frost-bitten. Autumn had dressed up her children in the garments of beauty, preparatory to their funeral. There was a good crop of grain that year, and hogs were brisk, and cattle lively, and all “looking-up,” in the language of the prices current. This was long before the time when Mr. M---- made his famous gammon speeches; but the people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the eventful anticipations of the season, there was quite a freshet in Salt river. The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation was beginning to chink his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as many railways, were about to be established; old things were about to fleet and disappear; all things were becoming new; and the serpent entered Charlemont, and made his way among the people thereof, without any signs of combustion, or overthrow, or earthquake. Everybody has some tolerable idea of what the visitation of a parson is, to the members of his flock. In the big cities he comes one day, and the quarterly collector the next. He sits down with the “gude wife” in a corner to themselves, and he speaks to her in precisely the same low tones which cunning lovers are apt to use. If he knows any one art better than another, it is that of finding his way to the affections of the female part of his flock. A subdued tone of voice betrays a certain deference for the party addressed. The lady is pleased with such a preliminary. She is flattered again by the pains he takes in behalf of her eternal interests; she is pretty sure he takes no such pains with any of her neighbors. It is a sign that he thinks her soul the most becoming little soul in the flock, and when he goes away, she looks after him and sighs, and thinks him the most blessed soul of a parson. The next week she is the first to get up a subscription which she heads with her own name in connection with a sum realized by stinting her son of his gingerbread money, in order to make this excellent parson a life-member of the “Zion African Bible and Missionary Society, for disseminating the Word among the Heathen.” The same fifty dollars so appropriated, would have provided fuel for a month to the starving poor of her own parish.