re of white-haired Larkin
Moore, the insane preacher, his two canes lain aside, waiting, in our
dooryard for any audience that he could gather: boys and girls were as
welcome as anybody. He would seat us in a row on the green slope, and
give us a half hour or so of incoherent exhortation, to which we
attended respectfully, if not reverently; for his whole manner showed
that, though demented, he was deeply in earnest. He seemed there in the
twilight like a dazed angel who had lost his way, and had half
forgotten his errand, which yet he must try to tell to anybody who
would listen.

I have heard my mother say that sometimes he would ask if he might take
her baby in his arms and sing to it; and that though she was half
afraid herself, the baby--I like to fancy I was that baby--seemed to
enjoy it, and played gleefully with the old man's flowing gray locks.

Good Larkin Moore was well known through the two neighboring counties,
Essex and Middlesex. We saw him afterward on the banks of the
Merrimack. He always wore a loose calico tunic over his trousers; and,
when the mood came upon him, he started off with two canes,--seeming to
think he could travel faster as a quadruped than as a biped. He was
entirely harmless; his only wish was to preach or to sing.

A characteristic anecdote used to be told of him: that once, as a
stage-coach containing, only a few passengers passed him on the road,
he asked the favor of a seat on the top, and was refused. There were
many miles between him and his destination. But he did not upbraid the
ungracious driver; he only swung his two canes a little more briskly,
and kept breast of the horses all the way, entering the town side by
side with the inhospitable vehicles--a running reproach to the churl on
the box.

There was another wanderer, a blind woman, whom my mother treated with
great respect on her annual pilgrimages. She brought with her some
printed rhymes to sell, purporting to be composed by herself, and
beginning with the verse:--

"I, Nancy Welsh, was born and bred
In Essex County, Marblehead.
And when I was an infant quite
The Lord deprived me of my sight."

I labored under the delusion that blindness was a sort of insanity, and
I used to run away when this pilgrim came, for she was not talkative
like Larkin Moore. I fancied she disliked children, and so I shrank
from her.

There were other odd estrays going about, who were either well known,
or could account for t