FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70  
71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   >>   >|  
some great argument, whose vast proportions will in due time be developed, like the uncovering of a colossus. Beware, Mr. Solomon Williams of Hatfield, and you, Chubb and Tyndal, and John Taylor of Norwich, for you will each and all of you find your master in this secluded parson. Thirteen hours per day are given to study, and this has been the average for years. And _such_ study to create realities out of the fogs of metaphysics, and to span the concrete and the abstract with a bridge such as Milton threw across space. This man can spend hours in pursuit of 'volitions' with all the excitement of the chamois-hunt. Now his eye brightens, for he has transfixed an idea, and holds it up in all the nicety of artistic touch, while he dissects it to its ramifications. It is all _con amore_ with him, though his readers will need a clue to the maze of intricate reasoning. One can not pass through the streets of Northampton, so broad, so rural, and so picturesque, without being overshadowed by that memory, which may be expressed in the sweet lines of Longfellow,-- 'Here in patience and in sorrow, laboring still with busy hand, Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the better land.' It is gratifying to know that his memory is honored in Northampton by the naming of a church, though all may not understand the connection. The old 'meeting-house' (for the Puritans used the word church only in a spiritual sense) stood fronting the site of the present enormous edifice. It was torn down in 1812. Here for nearly a quarter of a century the tall form, and face pale and meagre from intense thinking, appeared each Sabbath before a people among whom his recluse habits rendered him almost a stranger. Here, having rested upon the desk, upon the elbow of his left arm, whose hand held a tiny book of closely written MS., he read with stooping form and low tones those solemn arguments and tremendous appeals which now thrill us from the printed page. Each of those tiny books was a sermon. Many of these are still preserved, and Dr. Tryon Edwards, of New London, has a chest filled with these memorials of his great ancestor. They are written in so fine a hand as to be hardly legible except to one practiced in their deciphering--a result of the extreme economy of one who, with all carefulness, was the largest consumer of paper and ink in New England. Solemn as was the deportment of this reverend man, sundry practical jokes at his expens
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70  
71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
memory
 

written

 

Northampton

 

church

 

stranger

 

fronting

 
rendered
 

recluse

 

habits

 
Puritans

rested

 

spiritual

 

edifice

 

meagre

 
intense
 

thinking

 

quarter

 
century
 

appeared

 

enormous


people

 

Sabbath

 
present
 

solemn

 

practiced

 

deciphering

 
result
 

economy

 
extreme
 
legible

ancestor

 

memorials

 

carefulness

 

sundry

 

reverend

 

practical

 

expens

 

deportment

 

Solemn

 
consumer

largest
 

England

 

filled

 

arguments

 
appeals
 

tremendous

 

stooping

 
closely
 

thrill

 

preserved