Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/73

 that the infirmities of age precluded the hermit from the fatigues of his pilgrimage. He was seen to guide his lettering steps by a staff, and to look vacantly at surrounding objects, as if his eye was dim to their proportions. The hair upon his head had become thin, and whiter than silver, yet he defended it by no covering from the blast or from the tempest. He now received with unwonted kindness, additional clothing, or occasional food from his countrymen, but if they offered him flesh he would repel it with disgust, saying "it must never pass the lips of Maurice." The benevolence of Mr. Occom was strongly excited in his behalf. He visited him in his cell, relieved his famine, and urged him to accept of a milder faith and to rely on the expiation of his Redeemer, and not on the mortification of his frail, decaying body. He would listen calmly to his discourses, but when he touched upon any peculiar tenet of the Roman church, would wave his withered hand, with all its wasted energy, and exclaim "your way is not my way."