The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

It was not often that, as in the above instance, my mother's prudence got the better of her charity. The regular ‘old stragglers’ regarded her as an unfailing friend; and the sight of her plain cap was to them an assurance of forthcoming creature-comforts. There was indeed a tribe of lazy strollers, having their place of rendezvous in the town of Barrington, New Hampshire, whose low vices had placed them beyond even the pale of her benevolence. They were not unconscious of their evil reputation; and experience had taught them the necessity of concealing, under well-contrived disguises, their true character. They came to us in all shapes and with all appearances save the true one, with most miserable stories of mishap and sickness and all ‘the ills which flesh is heir to.’ It was particularly vexatious to discover, when too late, that our sympathies and charities had been expended upon such graceless vagabonds as the ‘Barrington beggars.’ An old withered hag, known by the appellation of Hopping Pat,—the wise woman of her tribe,—was in the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had ‘a gift for preaching’ as well as for many other things not exactly compatible with holy orders. He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd, knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk like Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could ‘do nothina at exhortina without a white handkercher on his neck and money in his pocket,’ —a fact going far to confirm the opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the Puseyites generally, that there can be no priest without tithes and surplice.