This event, like all great revolutions, did not fail to give sad umbrage to many in the church; and as to Deacon Dogskin, who had fought as the great champion of the primitive system, he took it in such dudgeon that he fell into a fit of the sullens, which resulted in a determination to leave a community where his opinion and authority had been so flagrantly set at nought. Within two years, therefore, he sold off his farm, settled all his concerns both temporal and spiritual in the town, and removed to a village about fifteen miles distant. His ostensible motive for the removal was his declining age, which he declared to be unequal to the cultivation of so large a farm as he possessed in our neighbourhood; but the true reason was guessed at by every one, as the Deacon could never speak of the singing-school without evident marks of chagrin. Be this as it may, we proceeded to organise the singing-school forthwith, for it was determined to do things in style. First of all, it was necessary to find a singing-master who was competent to instruct us theoretically in the principles of the art, and put us to the full discipline of our powers. No one, of course, thought of going out of the town for this, and our directors shortly pitched upon a personage known to every body by the name of Hopper Paul. This man knew more tunes than any person within twenty miles, and, for aught we knew, more than any other man in the world. He could sing Old Hundred, and Little Marlborough, and Saint Andrews, and Bray, and Mear, and Tanzar, and Quercy, and at least half a dozen others whose names I have forgotten, so that he was looked upon as a musical prodigy. I shall never forget Hopper Paul, for both the sounds and sights he exhibited were such as could hardly be called earthly. He was about six feet and a half high, exceedingly lank and long, with a countenance which at the first sight would suggest to you the idea that he had suffered a _face-quake_, for the different parts of his visage appeared to have been shaken out of their places and never to have settled properly together. His mouth was capable of such a degree of dilation and collapse and twisting, that it looked like a half a dozen pair of lips sewed into one. The voice to which this comely pair of jaws gave utterance might have been compared to the lowing of a cow, or the deepest bass of an overgrown bull-frog, but hardly to any sound made by human organs.