avaricious or miserly man: he had always
his old Spanish milled quarter ready for the contribution-box upon
Collection-Sundays; and no man in the parish brought a heavier turkey to
the parson's larder on donation-days: but he could no more resist the
sharpening of a bargain than he could resist a command of his wife. He
talked of a good trade to the old heads up and down the village street
as a lad talks of a new toy.

"Squire," he would say, addressing a neighbor on the Common, "what do
you s'pose I paid for that brindle ye'rlin' o' mine? Give us a guess."

"Waael, Deacon, I guess you paid about ten dollars."

"Only eight!" the Deacon would say, with a smile that was fairly
luminous,--"and a pootty likely critter I call it for eight dollars."

"Five hogs this year," (in this way the Deacon was used to
soliloquize,)--"I hope to make 'em three hundred apiece. The
price works up about Christmas: Deacon Simmons has sold his'n at
five,--distillery-pork; that's sleezy, wastes in bilin'; folks know it:
mine, bein' corn-fed, ought to bring half a cent more,--and say, for
Christmas, six; that'll give a gain of a cent,--on five hogs, at three
hundred apiece, will be fifteen dollars. That'll pay half my pew-rent,
and leave somethin' over for Almiry, who's always wantin' fresh ribbons
about New-Year's."

The Deacon cherished a strong dread of formal visits to the parsonage:
first, because it involved his Sunday toilet, in which he was never
easy, except at conference or in his pew at the meeting-house; and next,
because he counted it necessary on such occasions to give a Scriptural
garnish to his talk, in which attempt he almost always, under the
authoritative look of the parson, blundered into difficulty. Yet
Tourtelot, in obedience to his wife's suggestion, and primed with a text
from Matthew, undertook the visit of condolence,--and, being a really
kind-hearted man, bore himself well in it. Over and over the good parson
shook his hand in thanks.

"It'll all be right," says the Deacon. "'Blessed are the mourners,' is
the Scripteral language, 'for they shall inherit the earth.'"

"No, not that, Deacon," says the minister, to whom a misquotation was
like a wound in the flesh; "the last thing I want is to inherit the
earth. 'They shall be comforted,'--that's the promise, Deacon, and I
count on it."

It was mortifying to his visitor to be caught napping on so familiar a
text; the parson saw it, and spoke consolingly. But if