it
is, has had to struggle with this outward tendency, too much feeling and
sentiment, and too little patient thinking, and I believe that I should
have accomplished a great deal more if I had had, not the sanguine
alone, but the sanguine-bilious temperament.

Manasseh Kempton had it. He was the deacon of my church. I used to think
that nobody knew, or at least fairly appreciated, him as I did. Under
that heavy brow, and phlegmatic aspect, [71] and reserved bearing,
there was an amount of fire and passion and thought, and sometimes in
conversation an eloquence, which showed me that, with proper advantages,
he would have made a great man.

James Arnold was a person too remarkable to be passed over in this
account of the New Bedford men. With great wealth, with the most
beautiful situation in the town, and, yet more, with the aid of his
wife, never mentioned or remembered but to be admired, his house was the
acceptable resort of strangers, more than any other among us. Mr. Arnold
was not only a man of unshaken integrity, but of strong thought; and
if a liberal education had given him powers of utterance, the habit of
marshalling his thoughts, equal to the powers of his mind, he would have
been known as one of the remarkable men in the State.

One other figure rises to my recollection, which seems hardly to belong
to the modern world, and that is Dr. Whittredge of Tiverton. In his
religious faith he belonged to us, and occasionally came over to attend
our church. I used, from time to time, to pay him visits of a day or
two, always made pleasant by the placid and gentle presence of his wife,
and by the brisk and eager conversation of the old gentleman. He was
acquainted in his earlier days with my predecessor, of twenty-five years
previous date, Dr. West, himself a remarkable man in his day, [72] and
almost equally so, both for his eccentricity and his sense. An eccentric
clergyman, by the by, is rarely seen now; but in former times it was a
character as common as now it is rare. The commanding position of the
clergy the freedom they felt to say and do what they pleased brought
that trait out in high relief. The great democratic pressure has passed
like a roller over society: everybody is afraid of everybody; everybody
wants something, office, appointment, business, position, and he is to
receive it, not from a high patron, but from the common vote or opinion.

Dr. West's eccentricity arose from absorption into his own