h; but he
sang always, and his chirrup was heard at all seasons. In the winter
the fire on the hearth warmed him; in the summer he had a cool resting
place, and he was cheerful and merry through all the long year. And
this reminds me of an anecdote of a venerable minister, who passed
years ago to his rest. He was a Scotchman, and when preaching to his
own congregation at Salem, in Washington comity, he indulged in broad
Scotch, which to those who were accustomed to it was exceedingly
pleasant. I was a boy then, and was returning with my father from a
visit to Vermont. We stopped over the Sabbath at Salem, and attended
worship in the neat little church of that pleasant village. There were
no railroads in those days. The iron horse had not yet made his
advent, and the scream of the steam whistle had never startled the
echoes that dwell among the gorges of the Green Mountain State. Oh!
Progress! Progress! I have travelled that same route often since, more
than once within the year, and I flew over in an hour what was the
work of all that cold winter day that brought us at night to that neat
little village of Salem. I thought, as I dashed with a rush over the
road I once travelled so leisurely, how change was written upon
everything; how time and progress had obliterated all the old
landmarks, leaving scarcely anything around which memory could cling.
Well! well! it is so everywhere. All over the world, change,
improvement, progress are the words. The venerable minister, for his
locks were grey, and time had ploughed deep furrows down his cheeks,
and draws palpable lines across his brow, was, as my memory paints
him, the personification of earnestness, sincerity and truth. The text
and the drift of the sermon I have forgotten, save the little fragment
that fixed itself in my memory by the singularity of the figure by
which he illustrated his meaning. He was speaking of the operation of
the Holy Spirit upon the human heart, and how gently it won men from
their sinful ways. He said, 'It was not boisterous, like the rush of
the tempest; it was not fierce, like the lightning; it was not loud,
like the thunder; but it was a still sma' voice, like a wee cricket in
the wa's.' I regard the cricket that chirruped in the wall as an
institution. One of the past to be sure, swept away by the current of
progress, whose course is onward always; over everything, obliterating
everything, hurling the things of today into history, or burying