thoughts, and
forgetfulness of everything around him. He would pray in the family in
the evening till everybody went to sleep, and in the morning till the
breakfast was spoiled. He would preach upon some Scripture passage till
some one went and moved his mark forward. He once paid a visit to the
Governor in Boston, and, having got drenched in the rain, was supplied
with a suit of his host's, which unconsciously, he wore home, and
arrayed in which, he appeared in his pulpit on Sunday morning. At the
same time he was a man of strong and independent thought. I have read
a "Reply" of his to Edwards on the Will, in which the subject was ably
discussed, but without the needful logical coherence, perhaps, to make
its mark in the debate. [73] The conversations of West with his friend,
Dr. Whittredge, as the latter told me, ran constantly into theological
questions, upon which they differed. West was a frequent visitor at
Tiverton, and, when the debate drew on towards midnight, Whittredge was
obliged to say, "Well, I can't sit here talking with you all night;
for I must sleep, that I may go and see my patients to-morrow." He
was vexed, he said, that he should thus seem to "cry quarter" in the
controversy again and again, and he resolved that the next time he met
West, he would not stop, be they where they might. It so happened that
their next meeting was at the head of Acushnet River, three miles above
New Bedford, where Whittredge was visiting his patients, and West his
parishioners. This done, they set out towards evening to walk to New
Bedford. Whittredge throwing the bridle-rein over his arm, they walked
on slowly, every now and then turning aside into some crook of the
fence, the horse meantime getting his advantage in a bit of green grass,
and thus they talked and walked, and walked and talked, till the day
broke!

But the most remarkable thing about my venerable parishioner remains to
be mentioned. Dr. Whittredge was an alchemist. He had a furnace, in a
little building separate from his house, where he kept a fire for forty
years, till he was more than eighty, visiting it every night, of summer
and winter alike, to be sure of keeping it alive; [74] and melting
down, as his family said, many a good guinea, and all to find the
philosopher's stone, the mysterious metal that should turn all to gold.
From delicacy I never alluded to the subject with him, I am sorry now
that I did not. And he never adverted to it with me but on