Page:Letters of Life.djvu/164

152 somewhat confirmatory of the ancient adage that "the course of true love never did run smooth."

Her spouse, the Rev. David Austin, was quite a character. He was stately and elegant in person, of insinuating manners, polished by European travel, and possessed of an ample fortune. He was fluent, often eloquent, and took great delight in the exercise of his oratorical powers. He was a good scholar, though a vivid, excursive imagination often made shipwreck of both argument and analysis. Over the people of his charge he had, at first, an entire influence; but intense study of the prophetic portions of Scripture, while partially recovered from an attack of scarlet fever, unsettled his mind, and led to wild theories which ended in his dismission. Afterwards he occupied himself with building on so extensive a scale in his native city of New Haven, as to exhaust his own finances and involve those of his family, and become, for a time, the inmate of a debtor's prison. When released, and finding that his eccentricities had excluded him from the regular pulpits of his own denomination, he was immersed, and joined the Baptists, and then the Methodist connection. His amiable wife, whose native prudence would have been a healthful counterpoise to his eccentricity had its influence been admitted, returned to the abode of her parents. He was there frequently an inmate with her, and eventually a constant resident.