regular "horse-shedder" is
employed to frequent taverns where jurors stay, and drops hints before
them touching the merits of causes known to be on the calendars;
possibly contrives to get into a room with six or eight beds, in which
there may accidentally be a juror, or even two, in a bed, when he drops
into a natural conversation on the merits of some matter at issue,
praises one of the parties, while he drops dark hints to the prejudice
of the other, and makes his own representations of the facts in a way to
scatter the seed where he is morally certain it will take root and grow.
All this time he is not conversing with a juror, not he; he is only
assuming the office of the judge by anticipation, and dissecting
evidence before it has been given, in the ear of a particular friend. It
is true there is a law against doing anything of the sort; it is true
there is law to punish the editor of a newspaper who shall publish
anything to prejudice the interests of litigants; it is true the
"horse-shedding process" is flagrantly wicked, and intended to destroy
most of the benefits of the jury-system; but, notwithstanding all this,
the "spirit of the institutions" carries everything before it, and men
regard all these laws and provisions, as well as the eternal principles
of right, precisely as if they had no existence at all, or as if a
freeman were above the law. He makes the law, and why should he not
break it? Here is another effect of the "spirit of the institutions."

At length the bell rang, and the crowd began to move towards the
"meetin'-us." This building was not that which had been originally
constructed, and at the raising of which, I have heard it said, my dear
old grandmother, then a lovely and spirited girl of nineteen, had been
conspicuous for her coolness and judgment, but a far more pretending
successor. The old building had been constructed on the true model of
the highest dissenting spirit--a spirit that induced its advocates to
quarrel with good taste as well as religious dogmas, in order to make
the chasm as wide as possible--while in this, some concessions had been
made to the temper of the times. I very well remember the old
"meetin'-us" at the "Little Nest," for it was pulled down to give place
to its more pretending successor after I had attained my sixteenth year.
A description of both may let the reader into the secret of our rural
church architecture.

The "old Neest meetin'-us," like its successor,