Owing to the
behavior of my double, or, if you please, to that public pressure
which compelled me to employ him, I have plenty of leisure to write
this communication.
I am, or rather was, a minister, of the Sandemanian connection. I was
settled in the active, wide-awake town of Naguadavick, on one of the
finest water-powers in Maine. We used to call it a Western town in the
heart of the civilization of New England. A charming place it was and
is. A spirited, brave young parish had I; and it seemed as if we might
have all "the joy of eventful living" to our hearts' content.
Alas! how little we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those
halcyon moments of our first housekeeping! To be the confidential
friend in a hundred families in the town--cutting the social trifle,
as my friend Haliburton says, "from the top of the whipped-syllabub to
the bottom of the sponge-cake, which is the foundation"--to keep
abreast of the thought of the age in one's study, and to do one's best
on Sunday to interweave that thought with the active life of an active
town, and to inspirit both and make both infinite by glimpses of the
Eternal Glory, seemed such an exquisite forelook into one's life!
Enough to do, and all so real and so grand! If this vision could only
have lasted.
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