A HYBRID 109 



family, he immediately sets it down as a hybrid, or a 

 mixture of two different species ; a botanist does the 

 same with plants ; and I do not think I can better 

 illustrate my view of this vara avis than by adopting the 

 same classification. No one would have taken him for 

 a minister of the Gospel, either from his dress, his 

 manners, his conversation, or his habits ; indeed, away 

 from the scene of his ministration, he would have passed 

 for anything but a meek and lowly successor of the 

 Apostles. 



Nevertheless he was such, of the sect called Indepen- 

 dents ; and, being at Lynn, I did not lose an opportunity 

 of witnessing his performance in the pulpit, when neither 

 his doctrine nor his devotion struck me to be of that 

 character which was likely to attract many followers. 

 Yet he was what the world would call a clever, and was 

 by no means indisposed to be an agreeable man. Fluent 

 in his conversation, and well up in all the topics of the 

 day, he was better calculated, I thought, for the social 

 board than for the more sober display of his elocution in 

 the pulpit. 



Nature had cheated him of his fair proportion, and had 

 sent him into the world with one hand deformed, which 

 in some measure accounts for his havino- been brouo:ht 

 up for the ministry, as that deformity incapacitated him 

 for being a mechanic — although it did not prevent his 

 trying his hand at driving four horses, which he now and 

 then attempted — till one evening, turning a sharp corner 

 "in the village of Denver, his infirmity caused him to 

 blunder : an overturn was the result, which put an end 

 to his advancement in that branch of the arts. He had 



