It was a happy cover for those who, cultivating a human appetite, and conscious of a human weakness, were solicitous, in respecting and providing for these, not to offend the Creator in the presence of his creatures.
The woodman, as one of this class, was full of glee, and promised Ralph an intellectual treat; for Parson Witter, the preacher in reference, had more than once, as he was pleased to acknowledge and phrase it, won his ears, and softened and delighted his heart.

He was popular in the village and its neighborhood, and where regular pastor was none, he might be considered to have made the strongest impression upon his almost primitive and certainly only in part civilized hearers.

His merits of mind were held of rather an elevated order, and in standard far over topping the current run of his fellow-laborers in the same vineyard; while his own example was admitted, on all hands, to keep pace evenly with the precepts which he taught, and to be not unworthy of the faith which he professed.

He was of the methodist persuasion--a sect which, among those who have sojourned in our southern and western forests, may confidently claim to have done more, and with motives as little questionable as any, toward the spread of civilization, good habits, and a proper morality, with the great mass, than all other known sects put together.

In a word, where men are remotely situated from one another, and can not well afford to provide for an established place of worship and a regular pastor, their labors, valued at the lowest standard of human want, are inappreciable.