Surely, I met the reverend man. He was a bald, brisk, worldly personage, with a most noble appetite for the flesh-pots. He carefully sustained himself the hypocrite in that last behalf, however, and to folk casual he offered nothing beyond an appearance fervently religious. While with us, he held forth in sundry local pulpits, and although I heard him not myself, he was warmly eulogized by pious critics who knew what sermons should be. The worthy Doctor with a view to Florida dangled about the General. The Reverend Campbell, and the magpie one, dangled about the worthy Doctor. They were made to see, with the very finish of it, however, that by no accident of concession would the General place their man, Westfall, in the van of Florida affairs to set up mimic thrones in the Governor's Palace of St. Augustine. The news was a blow to them; and the urgent trio were no Stoics to be capable of excluding from their brows the chagrin they felt. They no longer harrassed the General, however, which, when now a score of duties pulled at him like horses, was no small desideratum. Presumably as a last ditch wherein to perish, the Reverend Doctor Ely came to me. I was no favorite of his, nor he of mine. To me he was not a precious metal. Polished? yes--and yet only to remind one of brass. He was, as I have said, of fashionable model; fond of his burgundy, and his canvas-back; garbed fastidiously and in the mode; precisely that character the General so accurately read those years before when he suspected him as one less concerned for the fit of his conscience than the fit of his coat. When the Reverend Doctor encountered me, I cut him short. To do this, let me tell you, I took my courage in my hands, for it is no child's play to thwart a dominie. “You are one who holds fast for the doctrine of foreordination?” I asked this like a catechist at his questions. “I am,” returned the Reverend Doctor. “And you believe that many are called while few are chosen?” “I do.” “And in original sin; and infant damnation; and how hell is paved with children's skulls?” “I do. To what, however, does this move?” “And the love of gold to be the root of evil?” I went on, disregarding the question thrust at me; “and that it would be easier to pass a camel through the needle's eye than a rich man into heaven?” “Sir, I insist on hearing the purpose of your surprising curiosity.” “Why, then, it should all be huddled into this. Your Westfall, rich and sinful, by what you say may be presumed to dwell in multiplied peril of immortal shipwreck. And since such be your craft, and the trade you pick up bread by, would it not come more seemly for yourself, and be for this Westfall an effort more of grace, were you, instead of storming the General with pleas for a Governorship which might prove but a worm to gnaw him, to employ your self in bringing about the eternal safe advantage of his soul?”