First, shall we not recall the Reverend L., with his soft majesty of speech, having in it an ever-recurring _sforzando_, peculiarly impressive and overpowering,--L., with his benignity of soul and his keen, evanescent smile, intellect flashing through it, like lightning over a sombre waste of waters? He required the closest attention of any speaker to whom we have listened. The following must be incessant, the allegiance unabated, lest the Emersonian and gossamer-like sequence of ideas, the swift beauty of phrase and figure, elude you, never to reappear the same. His playfulness in the pulpit was unique. Subdued it was, yet how potent! Humor has many a fit abiding-place in this world, of which the pulpit seems last to be chosen. But L.'s discretion was royally sure. His salutary wit, felicitous in placing itself, and infrequent enough to rouse attention always newly, went on angelic errands with its Puck's wings. An apostolic purpose consecrated his airy thrusts at evil. The hand of steel was present ever under his caressing touches.
We surmise that if there was anything connected with his vocation which L. abhorred, it was the necessity of periodical charity-sermons. When induced to appear as pleader on these occasions, his conduct was amusingly characteristic. He played hide-and-seek with his petition; he put it off, eyed it curiously, fenced with it, and kept it at arm's length; then, beginning to advocate its claims, he held it up for your inspection reluctantly, as if it were no child of his, and his right were rather to befriend it in private than thrust it into public notice. He would say a few glowing words, making his fortitude under such an emergency as truly a hint to your benevolence as his spoken plea. He would sum up for you the misery of the poor, the lamentable differences in comfort, the evils that spring from unalleviated poverty, the precept of brotherly love, the imperative command of giving and sharing and making glad; all this with an air of indifference over facts in array, and of needless appealing to such hearts and such purses as yours were sure to be! L. could have written noble charity-sermons for another's delivery, but to ask in his own person was wellnigh impossible. He seemed to rebel, not against the actual discomfort of his position, but rather against the advisability of reminding you of a duty you never could have forgotten. In his chivalrous dealing he smote your sensibilities more surely than many a professional beggar with seven small children; and the shekels leaped in a fountain from you and from everybody else, until the alms-box overflowed. L.'s utility in this strange office was quite wonderful, even to himself. His very exordium, "Dear old friends!" was, though he knew it not, irresistible. On the morrow, Workhouse Tommy with a new cap, or barefooted Molly in the exhilaration of a sturdy dinner, must have blessed the shy and half-resentful claim which a great heart put forth as theirs.