try had been greatly reduced in numbers. The
meeting-house had been allowed to go to decay,
and the religious life of the parish was in a corresponding
state of depression. His ordination
services were held out of doors,--whether because
the assemblage was too large for the church, or
because the building was too dilapidated, does not
appear. The first thing Mr. Huntington did after
his settlement was to urge upon his people the
project of building a new meeting-house. They
responded so heartily that in a short time they had
built the best church in the whole region, having
expended for it about five thousand dollars--a
large sum in those days.

Dr. Huntington does not appear to have been a
laborious student. He had few books of his own,
largely depending upon borrowing. But he had a
remarkable memory and the power of so making
his own whatever he read that his scholarship and
his originality appear never to have been questioned.
The Rev. Daniel Waldo says of him that
he was rather above the middle height, slender and
graceful in form, and that he seemed to have had an
instinctive desire to make everybody around him
happy. This, added to his uniform politeness,
caused him to be very popular in general society.

[[116]]

p115 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p116w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p117

v?