ence as I remember him, with head slanting forward and downward as
if looking for a place to rest in after his learned labors; and that
other Thaddeus, the old man of West Cambridge, who outwatched the rest so
long after they had gone to sleep in their own churchyards, that it
almost seemed as if he meant to sit up until the morning of the
resurrection; and bringing up the rear, attenuated but vivacious little
Jonathan Homer of Newton, who was, to look upon, a kind of expurgated,
reduced and Americanized copy of Voltaire, but very unlike him in
wickedness or wit. The good-humored junior member of our family always
loved to make him happy by setting him chirruping about Miles Coverdale's
Version, and the Bishop's Bible, and how he wrote to his friend Sir Isaac
(Coffin) about something or other, and how Sir Isaac wrote back that he
was very much pleased with the contents of his letter, and so on about
Sir Isaac, ad libitum,--for the admiral was his old friend, and he was
proud of him. The kindly little old gentleman was a collector of Bibles,
and made himself believe he thought he should publish a learned
Commentary some day or other; but his friends looked for it only in the
Greek Calends,--say on the 31st of April, when that should come round, if
you would modernize the phrase. I recall also one or two exceptional and
infrequent visitors with perfect distinctness: cheerful Elijah Kellogg, a
lively missionary from the region of the Quoddy Indians, with much
hopeful talk about Sock Bason and his tribe; also poor old
Poor-house-Parson Isaac Smith, his head going like a China mandarin, as
he discussed the possibilities of the escape of that distinguished
captive whom he spoke of under the name, if I can reproduce phonetically
its vibrating nasalities of "General Mmbongaparty,"--a name suggestive to
my young imagination of a dangerous, loose-jointed skeleton, threatening
us all like the armed figure of Death in my little New England Primer.

I have mentioned only the names of those whose images come up pleasantly
before me, and I do not mean to say anything which any descendant might
not read smilingly. But there were some of the black-coated gentry whose
aspect was not so agreeable to me. It is very curious to me to look back
on my early likes and dislikes, and see how as a child I was attracted or
repelled by such and such ministers, a good deal, as I found out long
afterwards, according to their theological beliefs. O