d college alumni as they file in
procession. His strong, squared features, his formidable scowl, his
solid-looking head, his iron-gray hair, his positive and as it were
categorical stride, his slow, precise way of putting a statement, the
strange union of trampling radicalism in some directions and
high-stepping conservatism in others, which made it impossible to
calculate on his unexpressed opinions, his testy ways and his generous
impulses, his hard judgments and kindly actions, were characteristics
that gave him a very decided individuality.

He had all the aspects of a man of books. His study, which was the best
room in Mrs. Hopkins's house, was filled with a miscellaneous-looking
collection of volumes, which his curious literary taste had got together
from the shelves of all the libraries that had been broken up during his
long life as a scholar. Classics, theology, especially of the
controversial sort, statistics, politics, law, medicine, science, occult
and overt, general literature,--almost every branch of knowledge was
represented. His learning was very various, and of course mixed up,
useful and useless, new and ancient, dogmatic and rational,--like his
library, in short; for a library gathered like his is a looking-glass in
which the owner's mind is reflected.

The common people about the village did not know what to make of such a
phenomenon. He did not preach, marry, christen, or bury, like the
ministers, nor jog around with medicines for sick folks, nor carry cases
into court for quarrelsome neighbors. What was he good for? Not a great
deal, some of the wiseacres thought,--had "all sorts of sense but common
sense,"--"smart mahn, but not prahctical." There were others who read
him more shrewdly. He knowed more, they said, than all the ministers put
together, and if he'd stan' for Ripresentative they 'd like to vote for
him,--they hed n't hed a smart mahn in the Gineral Court sence Squire
Wibird was thar.

They may have overdone the matter in comparing his knowledge with that of
all the ministers together, for Priest Pemberton was a real scholar in
his special line of study,--as all D. D.'s are supposed to be, or they
would not have been honored with that distinguished title. But Mr. Byles
Gridley not only had more learning than the deep-sea line of the bucolic
intelligence could fathom; he had more wisdom also than they gave him
credit for, even those among them who thought most of his abilities.