house where the Representatives meet, do it, and no more
parsonizing about it."

"But, cousin, I do assure you, we have just come from it. You have heard
the members speaking."

"I have seen a meeting-house, and worshipped in it," says I.

"Are you really in earnest?" says he.

"Would I, the member of a church, trifle on a sacred subject?" says I.

"Oh!" says Cousin Dempster, a-leaning his back against the marble
wall--"oh! hold me, or I shall laugh myself to death."

I wish he had. There!

XLVII.

EASTER.

My dear sisters:--Christmas isn't a New England institution, and High
Churches are not indigenous to the Down East soil. The Pilgrim Fathers
took a notion against that species of holidays, and their descendants
were forbidden by law to make mince-pies and such like, in celebration
of that particular day. In fact, Christmas was turned out of meeting,
and Thanksgiving adopted in its place. As for High Churches, in the good
old times there wasn't a steeple to be seen. The meeting-houses were
spread out on the ground, roofed in like barns, and quartered off inside
into square pews, like a cake of gingerbread. The only thing that looked
like a steeple in those days was the minister, when he stood up to pray.
Sometimes he leaned a trifle backward to let the congregation see that
there was no chance that he would ever bow down to that old English
Church, against which the dust from his feet had been shaken.

The deacons ranged in that long seat under the pulpit, with iron-clad
faces and hearts, that had grown rocky in their uprightness, were such
men as you don't meet often nowadays. They not only shook the dust from
their feet against the Church of England, but scattered a good deal on
the Quakers and other sects that crept in from the Old World, with an
idea that they might have a sneaking notion of their own where trees
were so thick and men so upright; but you and I know they found out
their mistake.

Our blessed old forefathers sought Christian toleration for themselves
when they came into the wilderness, not for anybody else. They knew
exactly which was the shortest way to Heaven, and meant that other
people should follow it straight up.

Having cast off the old Church of England, and sang Thanksgiving hymns
on Plymouth Rock--which after all, sisters, wasn't much of a rock to
brag of as to size--of course our forefathers weren't likely to drag any
of the worn-out institutions along with them, so