jestic pines, all musical and silvery with the caresses of the
sea-waves, that loved to wander and lose themselves in their numberless
shelly coves and tiny beaches among their cedar shadows.

Not merely as a burdensome restraint, or a weary endurance, came the
shadow of that Puritan Sabbath. It brought with it all the sweetness
that belongs to rest, all the sacredness that hallows home, all the
memories of patient thrift, of sober order, of chastened yet intense
family feeling, of calmness, purity, and self-respecting dignity which
distinguish the Puritan household. It seemed a solemn pause in all the
sights and sounds of earth. And he whose moral nature was not yet enough
developed to fill the blank with visions of heaven was yet wholesomely
instructed by his weariness into the secret of his own spiritual
poverty.

Zephaniah Pennel, in his best Sunday clothes, with his hard visage
glowing with a sort of interior tenderness, ministered this morning at
his family-altar--one of those thousand priests of God's ordaining that
tend the sacred fire in as many families of New England. He had risen
with the morning star and been forth to meditate, and came in with his
mind softened and glowing. The trance-like calm of earth and sea found a
solemn answer with him, as he read what a poet wrote by the sea-shores
of the Mediterranean, ages ago: "Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my
God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honor and majesty. Who
coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the
heavens like a curtain: who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of
the wind. The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon,
which he hath planted; where the birds make their nests; as for the
stork, the fir-trees are her house. O Lord, how manifold are thy works!
in wisdom hast thou made them all."

Ages ago the cedars that the poet saw have rotted into dust, and from
their cones have risen generations of others, wide-winged and grand. But
the words of that poet have been wafted like seed to our days, and
sprung up in flowers of trust and faith in a thousand households.

"Well, now," said Miss Ruey, when the morning rite was over, "Mis'
Pennel, I s'pose you and the Cap'n will be wantin' to go to the meetin',
so don't you gin yourse'ves a mite of trouble about the children, for
I'll stay at home with 'em. The little feller wa