" Now
comes the for ever mysterious passage in history. There was amongst
the attendants at that meeting-house a young man who was apprentice
to a miller. He was a big, soft, quiet, plump-faced, awkward youth,
very good, but nothing more. He wore on Sunday a complete suit of
light pepper-and-salt clothes, and continued to wear pepper-and-salt
on Sunday all his life. He taught in the Sunday-school, and
afterwards, as he got older, he was encouraged to open his lips at a
prayer-meeting, and to "take the service" in the village chapels on
Sunday evening. He was the most singularly placid, even-tempered
person I ever knew. I first became acquainted with him when I was a
child and he was past middle life. What he was then, I am told, he
always was; and I certainly never heard one single violent word
escape his lips. His habits, even when young, had a tendency to
harden. He went to sleep after his mid-day dinner with the greatest
regularity, and he never could keep awake if he sat by a fire after
dark. I have seen him, when kneeling at family worship and praying
with his family, lose himself for an instant and nod his head, to the
confusion of all who were around him. He is dead now, but he lived
to a good old age, which crept upon him gradually with no pain, and
he passed away from this world to the next in a peaceful doze.
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