king conclusion, but I could see no other answer to my question,
and I felt ashamed to ask again. My self-invented theory about the
human race was that Adam and Eve were very tall people, taller than the
tallest trees in the Garden of Eden, before they were sent out of it;
but that they then began to dwindle; that their children had ever since
been getting smaller and smaller, and that by and by the inhabitants of
the world would be no bigger than babies. I was afraid I should stop
growing while I was a child, and I used to stand on the footstool in
the pew, and try to stretch myself up to my mother's height, to imagine
how it would seem to be a woman. I hoped I should be a tall one. I did
not wish to be a diminishing specimen of the race;--an anxiety which
proved to be entirely groundless.

The Sabbath mornings in those old times had a peculiar charm. They
seemed so much cleaner than other mornings! The roads and the grassy
footpaths seemed fresher, and the air itself purer and more wholesome
than on week-days. Saturday afternoon and evening were regarded as part
of the Sabbath (we were taught that it was heathenish to call the day
Sunday); work and playthings were laid aside, and every body, as well
as every thing, was subjected to a rigid renovation. Sabbath morning
would not have seemed like itself without a clean house, a clean skin,
and tidy and spotless clothing.

The Saturday's baking was a great event, the brick oven being heated to
receive the flour bread, the flour-and-Indian, and the rye-and-Indian
bread, the traditional pot of beans, the Indian pudding, and the pies;
for no further cooking was to be done until Monday. We smaller girls
thought it a great privilege to be allowed to watch the oven till the
roof of it should be "white-hot," so that the coals could be shoveled
out.

Then it was so still, both out of doors and within! We were not allowed
to walk anywhere except in the yard or garden. I remember wondering
whether it was never Sabbath-day over the fence, in the next field;
whether the field was not a kind of heathen field, since we could only
go into it on week-days. The wild flowers over there were perhaps
Gentile blossoms. Only the flowers in the garden were well-behaved
Christians. It was Sabbath in the house, and possibly even on the
doorstep; but not much farther. The town itself was so quiet that it
scarcely seemed to breathe. The sound of wheels was seldom heard in the
streets on that day