Nobody thought of staying away,--and, for
that matter, nobody wanted to stay away. Our weekly life was simple,
monotonous, and laborious; and the chance of seeing the whole
neighborhood together in their best clothes on Sunday, was a thing
which, in the dearth of all other sources of amusement, appealed to the
idlest and most unspiritual of loafers. They who did not care for the
sermon or the prayers, wanted to see Major Broad's scarlet coat and
laced ruffles, and his wife's brocade dress, and the new bonnet which
Lady Lothrop had just had sent up from Boston. Whoever had not seen
these would be out of society for a week to come, and not be able to
converse understandingly on the topics of the day.
The meeting on Sunday united in those days, as nearly as possible, the
whole population of a town,--men, women, and children. There was then
in a village but one fold and one shepherd, and long habit had made the
tendency to this one central point so much a necessity to every one,
that to stay away from "meetin," for any reason whatever, was always a
secret source of uneasiness. I remember in my early days, sometimes when
I had been left at home by reason of some of the transient ailments of
childhood, how ghostly and supernatural the stillness of the whole house
and village outside the meeting-house used to appear to me, how loudly
the clock ticked and the flies buzzed down the window-pane, and how I
listened in the breathless stillness to the distant psalm-singing, the
solemn tones of the long prayer, and then to the monotone of the sermon,
and then again to the closing echoes of the last hymn, and thought
sadly, what if some day I should be left out, when all my relations and
friends had gone to meeting in the New Jerusalem, and hear afar the
music from the crystal walls.
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