derable, as in
letting down the seats after the long prayer, especially if that proved
to be a very protracted exercise. But I have known young ladies so
indifferent to the severity of the weather, as to attend meeting, on very
cold days of winter, with bare arms. What would delicate ladies, who,
wrapped in warm furs, listen to service in a heated church, think of such
exposure now? On one particular occasion, however, our minister announced
the text,--"Who can stand before His cold?" and closed the services with
the usual blessing, a little to the dissatisfaction, I think, of the more
staid members of the congregation, who having come through cold and snow,
or a furious wintry storm, it might be, to hear a sermon, were not
altogether contented to miss the expected edification, or perhaps the
opportunity of criticising the discourse. Indeed, I know not what my
respected great grandsire, an elder of the church in his day, would have
said to such defection from spiritual needs towards indulgence in carnal
comfort. For it is said, that when some less searching and thorough-going
preacher of the word exchanged with our minister, or casually officiated
for him, the old gentleman tottered out of the meeting-house, leaning on
his staff, and with elevated eyebrows muttered pretty audibly to those
near him,--"Peas in a bladder--thorns under a pot--no food to-day!" And
however it might be with many of his neighbors, not the minutest particle
of the quality of original Puritanism had been shaken out of his system
by the changes of the times. The family tradition is, that before the
sunset of Saturday everything necessary for the support of nature upon
the Sabbath was cooked and in readiness. Whether he allowed the
accustomed beans and rye and Indian bread to remain in the oven subject
to the working heat, over Saturday night, I am not able to certify. But
in the intervals of public worship on Sunday,--a term, by the way, which
he would have scorned to employ,--the family was assembled and ranged
around the walls of the room, and the reading of Scripture, or of some
well-worn book of devotion, was proceeded with, while the head of the
family sat in the centre, with a stick in his hand long enough to reach
the head and shoulders of any inattentive or unquiet child.

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[7] When a trader failed, as was rarely the case at that
primitive period, his sign was taken down at night, to
the wonder of the public in the mo