y, with no fear
of consequences. And then, as the tall clock in the corner of the room
ticks on majestically towards nine, the conversation takes, it may be, a
little more serious turn, and it is suggested that a very happy evening
may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon the circle breaks up with a
reverent, congratulative look on every face, which is itself the truest
language of a social nature blessed in human fellowship.

Such, in general, was the society of the homespun age....

Passing to the church, or rather I should say, to the
meeting-house--good translation, whether meant or not, of what is older
and more venerable than _church_, viz., _synagogue_--here again you meet
the picture of a sturdy homespun worship. Probably it stands on some
hill, midway between three or four valleys, whither the tribes go up to
worship, and, when the snow-drifts are deepest, go literally from
strength to strength. There is no furnace or stove save the foot-stoves
that are filled from the fires of the neighboring houses, and brought in
partly as a rather formal compliment to the delicacy of the tender sex,
and sometimes because they are really wanted. The dress of the assembly
is mostly homespun, indicating only slight distinctions of quality in
the worshipers. They are seated according to age,--the old king Lemuels
and their queens in front, near the pulpit, and the younger Lemuels
farther back, inclosed in pews, sitting back to back, impounded, all,
for deep thought and spiritual digestion; only the deacons, sitting
close under the pulpit by themselves, to receive, as their distinctive
honor, the more perpendicular droppings of the Word. Clean round the
front of the gallery is drawn a single row of choir, headed by the
key-pipe in the centre. The pulpit is overhung by an august wooden
canopy called a sounding-board--study general, of course, and first
lesson of mystery to the eyes of the children, until what time their
ears are opened to understand the spoken mysteries.

There is no affectation of seriousness in the assembly, no mannerism of
worship; some would say too little of the manner of worship. They think
of nothing, in fact, save what meets their intelligence and enters into
them by that method. They appear like men who have a digestion for
strong meat, and have no conception that trifles more delicate can be of
any account to feed the system. Nothing is dull that has the matter in
it, nothing long that has not exha