f a preacher and of a preaching in the neighborhood on
that day. It was the sabbath--and though, generally speaking, very far
from being kept holy in that region, yet, as a day of repose from
labor--a holyday, in fact--it was observed, at all times, with more than
religious scrupulosity. Such an event among the people of this quarter
was always productive of a congregation. The occurrence being
unfrequent, its importance was duly and necessarily increased in the
estimation of those, the remote and insulated position of whom rendered
society, whenever it could be found, a leading and general attraction.
No matter what the character of the auspices under which it was
attained, they yearned for its associations, and gathered where they
were to be enjoyed. A field-preaching, too, is a legitimate amusement;
and, though not intended as such, formed a genuine excuse and apology
for those who desired it less for its teaching than its talk--who sought
it less for the word which it brought of God than that which it
furnished from the world of man. It was a happy cover for those who,
cultivating a human appetite, and conscious of a human weakness, were
solicitous, in respecting and providing for these, not to offend the
Creator in the presence of his creatures.

The woodman, as one of this class, was full of glee, and promised Ralph
an intellectual treat; for Parson Witter, the preacher in reference, had
more than once, as he was pleased to acknowledge and phrase it, won his
ears, and softened and delighted his heart. He was popular in the
village and its neighborhood, and where regular pastor was none, he
might be considered to have made the strongest impression upon his
almost primitive and certainly only in part civilized hearers. His
merits of mind were held of rather an elevated order, and in standard
far over topping the current run of his fellow-laborers in the same
vineyard; while his own example was admitted, on all hands, to keep pace
evenly with the precepts which he taught, and to be not unworthy of the
faith which he professed. He was of the methodist persuasion--a sect
which, among those who have sojourned in our southern and western
forests, may confidently claim to have done more, and with motives as
little questionable as any, toward the spread of civilization, good
habits, and a proper morality, with the great mass, than all other known
sects put together. In a word, where men are remotely situated from one
anoth