The puritanism of Comfort Makepeace was not confined to the mere matters of household regulations, or religious worship. It extended to all his business transactions, and marked all the social relations into which he was led. In the former, the most scrupulous honesty was at all times professed, though there were those, such as had little respect for the severity of his creed, who were ready to assert that he had a conscience so nice as to distinguish between telling a truth with intent to deceive, and absolute falsehood. A notorious stickler for what he termed the right, he was always found ready to drive a good bargain; and if report spoke truly, to overreach his neighbor, where it might be done without a palpable infringement of the rules of trade. In his neighborly intercourse, he ever preserved the same sober demeanor, using no unnecessary language, rarely indulging in a smile, and never in a decided laugh. Comfort could not be called unneighborly, nor did he ever acquire the credit of liberality. The poor went not away empty-handed, if copious meeds of advice and exhortation counted or availed aught; and sometimes they might rejoice in the gift of more substantial worldly aid. All may have heard of the person who excused dry eyes at an affecting charity discourse, by professing to belong to another parish; and it might not have unfrequently happened, that those who appealed to the benevolence of Comfort Makepeace, found him in a situation not widely dissimilar. Certainly, the rigidity of his principles did not permit him to associate with those who were denominated unsaintly, any farther than was necessary in the transaction of his worldly affairs. Yet Comfort lived too late in the world, to be wholly devoid of generous feeling. Apparent distress seldom failed to moisten his cheek with the tear of sympathy, or to touch him in that generally less sensitive spot--the purse.