Were braided up to hide a desert crown; His coat was brownish, black perhaps of yore; In summer-time a banyan loose he wore; His trousers short, through many a season true, Made no pretence to hide his stockings blue; A waistcoat buff his chief adornment was, Its porcelain buttons rimmed with dusky brass. A deacon he, you saw it in each limb, And well he knew to deacon-off a hymn, Or lead the choir through all its wandering woes With voice that gathered unction in his nose, Wherein a constant snuffle you might hear, As if with him ’twere winter all the year. At pew-head sat he with decorous pains, In sermon-time could foot his weekly gains, Or, with closed eyes and heaven-abstracted air, Could plan a new investment in long-prayer. A pious man, and thrifty too, he made The psalms and prophets partners in his trade, And in his orthodoxy straitened more As it enlarged the business at his store; He honored Moses, but, when gain he planned, Had his own notion of the Promised Land. “Soon as the winter made the sledding good, From far around the farmers hauled him wood, For all the trade had gathered ’neath his thumb. He paid in groceries and New England rum, Making two profits with a conscience clear,-- Cheap all he bought, and all he paid with dear. With his own mete-wand measuring every load, Each somehow had diminished on the road; An honest cord in Jethro still would fail By a good foot upon the Deacon’s scale, And, more to abate the price, his gimlet eye Would pierce to cat-sticks that none else could spy; Yet none dared grumble, for no farmer yet But New Year found him in the Deacon’s debt. “While the first snow was mealy under feet, A team drawled creaking down Quompegan street. Two cords of oak weighed down the grinding sled, And cornstalk fodder rustled overhead; The oxen’s muzzles, as they shouldered through, Were silver-fringed; the driver’s own was blue As the coarse frock that swung below his knee. Behind his load for shelter waded he; His mittened hands now on his chest he beat, Now stamped the stiffened cowhides of his feet, Hushed as a ghost’s; his armpit scarce could hold The walnut whipstock slippery-bright with cold. What wonder if, the tavern as he past, He looked and longed, and stayed his beasts at last, Who patient stood and veiled themselves in steam While he explored the bar-room’s ruddy gleam?