Thou, too, O Parson B.,--with thy pale student's brow and rubicund nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white, flowing locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when even a shirt to thy back was problematical,--art by no means to be overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the _entree_ of our farmhouse. Well do we remember with what grave and dignified courtesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its inmates with the same air of gracious condescension and patronage with which in better days he had delighted the hearts of his parishioners. Poor old man! He had once been the admired and almost worshipped minister of the largest church in the town where he afterwards found support in the winter season, as a pauper. He had early fallen into intemperate habits; and at the age of three-score and ten, when I remember him, he was only sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise. Drunk or sober, however, he never altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession; he was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil of the learned and astute Emmons,(1) and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar dogmas of his school. The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting in our district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and travelling companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was doubtless the same which endeared Tam O'Shanter to the souter:(2)-- "They had been fou for weeks thegither." He took for his text the first seven verses of the concluding chapter of Ecclesiastes, furnishing in himself its fitting illustration. The evil days had come; the keepers of the house trembled; the windows of life were darkened. A few months later the silver cord was loosed, the golden bowl was broken, and between the poor old man and the temptations which beset him fell the thick curtains of the grave. (1) Nathaniel Emmons was a New England theologian of marked character and power, who for seventy years was connected with a church in that part of Wrentham, Mass., now called Franklin. He exercised considerable influence over the religious thought of New England, and is still read by theologians. He died in 1840, in his ninety-sixth year. (2) Souter (or cobbler) Johnny, in Burns's poetic tale of _Tam O'Shanter,_ had been _fou_ or _full_ of drink with Tam for weeks together.