To come nearer home, our village at one time rejoiced in a gold-worshiper, whose history is worth relating. While still young, and taking our daily walk with our nurse, we observed an old man working at the repairs of some miserably dismantled houses. He was a tall, gaunt personage, painfully meagre, and very ragged. His jawbones protruded distressingly, and his poor thin elbows looked so sharp, that one could have fancied they had cut their way through the torn coat that no longer covered them. We pitied, and with childlike sympathy and freedom made acquaintance with him; always pausing to speak to him when we passed the spot on which he labored. Sometimes a little boy, a fair delicate child, was with him, assisting in the work as far as his age allowed; and with this young creature we grew intimate, and were at length led by him to the old man's home. It was a very large, old-fashioned farm-house, but so much out of repair that only three or four rooms were habitable. These, however, were kept in exquisite order by the wife, who was a very pretty, sad-looking woman, many years younger than her husband. By her care the antique furniture, which must have counted its century at least, was preserved brightly polished; the floors were so clean, that the lack of carpeting was scarcely perceptible; and the luxuriant jessamine she had trained round the windows was a charming substitute for curtains. There was one peculiarity about the dwelling, of a striking kind when its apparent poverty and the character of its owner were considered: it contained a music-room! in which was a tolerably large church-organ, _made and used_ by the miser himself. To the debasing and usually absorbing passion which governed him, he united a wonderful taste and genius for music, to gratify which he had constructed himself the instrument we have named, on which we have heard him perform in a style of touching, and at times sublime, expression, the compositions of Purcell, Pergolesi, Handel, &c. We have always thought this love of harmony in a miser a more singular and inconsistent characteristic than the avarice of Perugino or Rembrandt, since in their case the art they practiced fed their reigning passion for gold; nevertheless, so it was--old Mr. Monckton would go without a meal, see his wife and family want common necessaries, with plenty of money at his command, and yet solace himself by performances on the organ, which frequently went far into the night, startling the passing stranger by bursts of solemn midnight melody; for he never played till the faded daylight rendered it impossible for him to work at the various little jobs by which he added to his hoards.