"The spirits,"
then at the height of their profit and renown, were adapted to his
purpose. A blank and vacant mind was freely offered to any power of
earth or air which would condescend to enter and possess it. And so Mr.
Stellato, with his three parts knavery and two parts delusion, became a
popular and successful ghost-monger.
The parsonage had been closed since Charles Clifton terminated his
connection with the parish two years before. The newest lights of the
Liberal persuasion, fledglings from divinity-schools, youths of every
possible variety of creed and no creed, had by turns occupied the vacant
pulpit. The Gospel vibrated at all points between the interpretations of
Calvin and Strauss. The congregation grew more and more critical, and
could agree upon no candidate for settlement. They demanded the
respectability of belief with the showy talents of skepticism,--an
impossible combination, at least for a parish which offered only eight
hundred dollars and a decrepit house. At length Colonel Prowley took a
pew in the Orthodox Church;--it was a temporary arrangement, he said, to
be terminated whenever a settled minister should be provided for the
First Parish.
The Reverend Charles Clifton seldom left the rooms which he had taken in
a farmer's family on the outskirts of the town.
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