No attempted oratory with him! no prepared surprises! no playhouse tricks! no studied graces in wafture of hands and upheaved eyes! And yet at moments when he became possessed with his object rather than subject, every inch of him seemed alive.

He was odd--very odd; perhaps he was crazy--but at least he was honest.

He had heard him himself, and judged him well worth helping to what was better, for, alas! notwithstanding the vigor of his preaching, he did not appear to have himself discovered as yet the treasure hid in the field.

He was, nevertheless, incomparably the superior of the young man whom, expecting him to _draw_, the deacons of his church, with the members behind them, had substituted for himself, who had for more than fifteen years ministered to them the bread of life.
Bread!--Yes, I think it might honestly be called bread that Walter Drake had ministered.

It had not been free from chalk or potatoes: bits of shell and peel might have been found in it, with an occasional bit of dirt, and a hair or two; yes, even a little alum, and that is _bad_, because it tends to destroy, not satisfy the hunger.