es past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter."

THE OLD MEETING HOUSE.

SKETCH FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF AN OLD GENTLEMAN.

Never shall I forget the dignity and sense of importance which swelled
my mind when I was first pronounced old enough to go to meeting. That
eventful Sunday I was up long before day, and even took my Sabbath suit
to the window to ascertain by the first light that it actually was
there, just as it looked the night before. With what complacency did I
view myself completely dressed! How did I count over the rows of yellow
gilt buttons on my coat! how my good mother, grandmother, and aunts
fussed, and twitched, and pulled, to make every thing set up and set
down, just in the proper place! how my clean, starched white collar was
turned over and smoothed again and again, and my golden curls twisted
and arranged to make the most of me! and, last of all, how I was
cautioned not to be thinking of my clothes! In truth, I was in those
days a very handsome youngster, and it really is no more than justice to
let the fact be known, as there is nothing in my present appearance from
which it could ever be inferred. Every body in the house successively
asked me if I should be a good boy, and sit still, and not talk, nor
laugh; and my mother informed me, _in terrorem_, that there was a
tithing man, who carried off naughty children, and shut them up in a
dark place behind the pulpit; and that this tithing man, Mr. Zephaniah
Scranton, sat just where he could see me. This fact impressed my mind
with more solemnity than all the exhortations which had preceded it--a
proof of the efficacy of facts above reason. Under shadow and power of
this weighty truth, I demurely took hold of my mother's forefinger to
walk to meeting.

The traveller in New England, as he stands on some eminence, and looks
down on its rich landscape of golden grain and waving cornfield, sees no
feature more beautiful than its simple churches, whose white taper
fingers point upward, amid the greenness and bloom of the distant
prospects, as if to remind one of the overshadowing providence whence
all this luxuriant beauty flows; and year by year, as new ones are added
to the number, or succeed in the place of old ones, there is discernible
an evident improvement in their taste and architecture. Those modest
Doric little