ness was so arranged that by Saturday noon it seemed to
come to a close of itself. All his accounts were looked over, his
work-men paid, all borrowed things returned, and lent things sent after,
and every tool and article belonging to the farm was returned to its own
place at exactly such an hour every Saturday afternoon, and an hour
before sundown every item of preparation, even to the blacking of his
Sunday shoes and the brushing of his Sunday coat, was entirely
concluded; and at the going down of the sun, the stillness of the
Sabbath seemed to settle down over the whole dwelling.

And now it is Sunday morning; and though all without is fragrance, and
motion, and beauty, the dewdrops are twinkling, butterflies fluttering,
and merry birds carolling and racketing as if they never could sing loud
or fast enough, yet within there is such a stillness that the tick of
the tall mahogany clock is audible through the whole house, and the buzz
of the blue flies, as they whiz along up and down the window panes, is a
distinct item of hearing. Look into the best front room, and you may see
the upright form of my Uncle Phineas, in his immaculate Sunday clothes,
with his Bible spread open on the little stand before him, and even a
deeper than usual gravity settling down over his toil-worn features.
Alongside, in well-brushed Sunday clothes, with clean faces and smooth
hair, sat the whole of us younger people, each drawn up in a chair, with
hat and handkerchief, ready for the first stroke of the bell, while Aunt
Kezzy, all trimmed, and primmed, and made ready for meeting, sat reading
her psalm book, only looking up occasionally to give an additional jerk
to some shirt collar, or the fifteenth pull to Susan's frock, or to
repress any straggling looks that might be wandering about, "beholding
vanity."

A stranger, in glancing at Uncle Phineas as he sat intent on his Sunday
reading, might have seen that the Sabbath was _in his heart_--there was
no mistake about it. It was plain that he had put by all worldly
thoughts when he shut up his account book, and that his mind was as free
from every earthly association as his Sunday coat was from dust. The
slave of worldliness, who is driven, by perplexing business or
adventurous speculation, through the hours of a half-kept Sabbath to the
fatigues of another week, might envy the unbroken quiet, the sunny
tranquillity, which hallowed the weekly rest of my uncle.

The Sabbath of the Puritan Chr