were a
few country-looking stores and shops, and on the shore three or four
rather decayed and shaky wharves ran into the water, and a few schooners
lay at anchor near them; and the usual decaying warehouses leaned about
the docks. A peaceful and perhaps a thriving place, but not a bustling
place. As I walked down the road, a sailboat put out from the shore
and slowly disappeared round the island in the direction of the Grand
Narrows. It had a small pleasure party on board. None of them were
drowned that day, and I learned at night that they were Roman Catholics
from Whykokornagh.

The kirk, which stands near the water, and at a distance shows a pretty
wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New England meeting-house. When
I reached it, the house was full and the service had begun. There was
something familiar in the bareness and uncompromising plainness
and ugliness of the interior. The pews had high backs, with narrow,
uncushioned seats. The pulpit was high,--a sort of theological
fortification,--approached by wide, curving flights of stairs on either
side. Those who occupied the near seats to the right and left of the
pulpit had in front of them a blank board partition, and could not
by any possibility see the minister, though they broke their necks
backwards over their high coat-collars. The congregation had a striking
resemblance to a country New England congregation of say twenty years
ago. The clothes they wore had been Sunday clothes for at least that
length of time.

Such clothes have a look of I know not what devout and painful
respectability, that is in keeping with the worldly notion of rigid
Scotch Presbyterianism. One saw with pleasure the fresh and rosy-cheeked
children of this strict generation, but the women of the audience were
not in appearance different from newly arrived and respectable Irish
immigrants. They wore a white cap with long frills over the forehead,
and a black handkerchief thrown over it and hanging down the neck,--a
quaint and not unpleasing disguise.

The house, as I said, was crowded. It is the custom in this region to
go to church,--for whole families to go, even the smallest children;
and they not unfrequently walk six or seven miles to attend the service.
There is a kind of merit in this act that makes up for the lack of
certain other Christian virtues that are practiced elsewhere. The
service was worth coming seven miles to participate in!--it was about
two hours long, and o