Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/29

xxx in his graver writings this sometimes breaks out in freaks of sarcasm irrepressible, as where he argues that there can be no Devil since no print of his hoofs has been found in the Old Red Sandstone,—and that men are after all more well-disposed than the contrary, since “even South Carolina senators are sober all the forenoon!” But of course it was in private life that his playful humour naturally overflowed. We have seen letters to his intimate friends as full of pure drollery as Sydney Smith could have penned. One we remember, for instance, in which he answered his correspondent's accounts of a journey from Rome to Naples by his remarkable discoveries and ethnological and antiquarian speculations on a trip down the railway two stations from Boston. In another epistle he parodied some foolish over-illustrated biography then in vogue by extracting all the little woodcuts of advertisements of houses, steamers, &c., from the newspapers, and introducing them solemnly as “The House he was born in,” “His berceaunette,” “His perambulator,” and finally “His Mother,” being the well-known lady with half her hair dyed and the remainder grey!

All this versatility gave an inexpressible charm to Parker's character. In conversing with him one chord after another was struck, and each seemed richer and sweeter than the last. At one moment perhaps he was told of some moral results of his labours, or some poor backwoodsman wrote him a letter (we have seen a few out of many such), saying how his sermons were the food of the higher life to the writer and the rough comrades assembled weekly to hear them in their log-huts in the forests of the Far West. Then Parker's eyes would brighten, and the tears start into them, till he turned the subject to hide his emotion, and in a moment he would jest like a boy at some passing trifle with peals of richest laughter. And growing grave again, as some deeper subject opened, he would pour out his strange hoards of learning, all arranged in his own orderly fashion, as if he had constructed a table of it, beforehand, in his memory. Never far away were noble, sacred words of love and faith. One of the most religious women we ever knew, said to us, “It was good only to see Mr Parker in his church on Sunday, before we heard him. It made us all know that he felt the presence of God. We saw it in his face, so full of solemn joy as he rose to lead our prayers.”

Perhaps we have dwelt somewhat too fully on these details