"The meetin' houses 'our side of the water,' no matter where, but away
up in the back country, how teetotally different they be! bean't they?
A great big, handsome wooden house, chock full of winders, painted so
white as to put your eyes out, and so full of light within, that inside
seems all out-doors, and no tree nor bush, nor nothin' near it but
the road fence, with a man to preach in it, that is so strict and
straight-laced he will do _any thing_ of a week day, and _nothin'_ of
a Sunday. Congregations are rigged out in their spic and span bran new
clothes, silks, satins, ribbins, leghorns, palmetters, kiss-me-quicks,
and all sorts of rigs, and the men in their long-tail-blues, pig-skin
pads calf-skin boots and sheep-skin saddle-cloths. Here they publish a
book of fashions, there they publish 'em in meetin'; and instead of a
pictur, have the rael naked truth.

"Preacher there don't preach morals, because that's churchy, and he
don't like neither the church nor its morals; but he preaches doctrine,
which doctrine is, there's no Christians but themselves. Well, the
fences outside of the meetin' house, for a quarter of a mile or so,
each side of the house, and each side of the road, ain't to be seen for
hosses and waggons, and gigs hitched there; poor devils of hosses
that have ploughed, or hauled, or harrowed, or logged, or snaked, or
somethin' or another all the week, and rest of a Sunday by alterin'
their gait, as a man rests on a journey by a alterin' of his sturup, a
hole higher or a hole lower. Women that has all their finery on can't
walk, and some things is ondecent. It's as ondecent for a woman to
be seen walkin' to meetin', as it is to be caught at--what shall I
say?--why caught at attendin' to her business to home.

"The women are the fust and the last to meetin'; fine clothes cost
sunthin', and if they ain't showed, what's the use of them? The men folk
remind me of the hosses to Sable Island. It's a long low sand-bank on
Nova Scotia coast, thirty miles long and better is Sable Island, and not
much higher than the water. It has awful breakers round it, and picks
up a shockin' sight of vessels does that island. Government keeps a
super-intender there and twelve men to save wracked people, and there is
a herd of three hundred wild hosses kept there for food for saved crews
that land there, when provision is short, or for super-intender to catch
and break for use, as the case may be.

"Well, if he wants a n