stayed by me. One old schoolma'am, when the children told lies, used to put red pepper on their tongues. It was kept up in a little cupboard that had a dimity curtain to it. And when any took things not their own, she would hold their fingers over live coals and say, ''Tis hotter than that in hell.' Mostly some widow woman kept the school, right in her living-room, so the children had something to take up their minds, watching what was being cooked. Schooling was ninepence a week and carry a stick of firewood every day. It was after my mother grew up that girls were let go to the public schools. They went after the boys were dismissed, and stayed one hour, but there was great outcry that girls would be getting more learning than they needed."

"And were the public schools carried on about as they are now?"

"Oh, no! Every district chose its own school agent every year, and he would get some kind of a man for winter, and some woman of his acquaintance for summer, about three months the schools kept,and the little four-year-old ones and the great girls and young fellows from fifteen to twenty all went together. If you want to hear, I can tell you how a change was made. There was a Plymouth man, Ichabod Morton; he descended from the George that came over among the Pilgrims. Now there was something strange about that man, and you might be interested. Once when he was away on business, staying in a Boston boarding-house, his sleeping-room, in the night-time, became supernaturally lighted up, and he had a vision of this world as it ought to be according to the Gospel rule of love; and he made a vow-I don't know if to any person I think to some kind of a presence that he would give his life to bringing that state about. It was somehow to be done by Love - and there was nothing he took more enjoyment in than in joining in singing hymns that treated of love. Well there's no time to go into particulars, but first he was that coldwater man,' then he was an abolitionist, and he finally came to believe that school education ought to be made a way of bettering the world; and he went to town-meetings time and time again and plead to have the district plan done away with and the town take the management, and to have longer

schools and better teachers; and this, he said, would take more school money and - well, 'twas a long fight, for the poor parents said what had been good enough for them was good enough for their children, and the rich knew they could send theirs to private schools. theirs to private schools. But he kept at it, and got every year more and more money set off, and finally matters were fixed so that children of about the same age could go together. Then he worked for a Girls' High School, and then for a Normal School to teach teachers to teach, and that seems sensible enough to my mind. Why, I remember him going round our county with that state agent, Horace Mann, lecturing and begging money for a building. Horace Mann put something about him in print. Well, he wasn't thought much of by the general run, but he put his life into this kind of work, and when he died, his last words spoken to a gentleman who had been on his sidewere, 'Don't let the schools go down.' I can remember seeing Horace Mann stooping through the doorway of that Morton House - one of the little low, gambrelroofed housen over T'other Sidea good ways past the Debtors' Bounds. He was tall, and had a high, bulging forehead, and was in his prime then; but his hair was all white-it turned the night his wife died. Debtors' Bounds? Oh, that told how far the debtors in jail could walk out."

"You spoke of sermons. Are they of to-day so very different from those of the olden times?"

"About as different as another piece of cloth; and the same of religion. There was more strength in all such things. I don't know what you'll think if I say that the devil does not command anywhere nigh the attention he used to; but 'tis true. Sermons? Why, the deacons and members would have complained if election and predestination had been left out of the preaching. And the singing-why, what is Sabbath-day singing now, with only four to sing? The old way seemed as if there was something being done. The singers all stood up in long rows, and the front ones pulled together the little short curtains, and then all took the pitch; and they all had good strong voices in old times, the bass was every mite as good as an organ, and the clarionets and flutes and bass viols helped out. Oh, I would

or,

"Strike the cymbal!'

"On slippery rocks I see them stand,
While fiery billows roll below.'

One part would come in after another, and all joined in at the end in a long, sounding chord. If you look over my old hymnbook you will see that the hymns had as much strength in them as the sermons. Neighborhood meetings were not stiff and laid out regular. The men of a neighborhood went in just as they were, and the women stepped in with a cradle-quilt or anything over their heads, and they sat down on a bed or anywheres else; but the prayers were strong, and so were the exhortations for all to pay attention and believe while they were still alive and on praying ground. Protracted, four-days meetings were quite common; and ministers and delegates came and stayed through to the end. Now I suppose you never heard tell of Isaac Barnes. Well, he turned Universalist. That was after Unitarianism came round. Before then there was only one kind of religion except the Baptists, and they were not very plenty. Dr. Kendall was the one that brought in Unitarianism. He was settled here in 1800, and stayed till the time of his death in 1859. When he came out Unitarian, he let it be known by a sermon; and his text was from the twenty-fourth chapter of Acts: 'After the way which they call heresy so worship I the God of my fathers.' There was great agitation all over town, and he himself was under such agitation his voice trembled and his hand shook that held the sermon. A good many drew off, and some were between which and t'other what to do; for there was argumentation going on most everywhere, and both sides were set as the east wind. But the greater part took up with Unitarianism, and the other ones drew off and went to a leetle different kind of Orthodox meeting-house over on the Green. The High School keeps in it now.

"Universalism seemed worse than Unitarianism, and a good many members said it would make unrighteousness run down our streets like rivers; for it seemed to give folks a shock to hear it said right out that there was no hell, for hell was the life and soul of the preaching then - you can

I presume you've heard of Lorenzo Dow. He held a meeting in this town once. If I had a voice to sing I could sing you one of his hymns:

us.

"Oh, that I was some bird or beast!
Was I a stark or owl,
Some lofty tree should bear my nest,
Or through the desert prowl.
But I have an immortal soul
Within this house of clay,
Which either must with devils howl,
Or dwell in endless day.'

When I was a child, some of the Primer
hymns used to keep running in my mind.
nights, when I wanted to go to sleep.
They used to scare me about as much as
'old stragglers' did. We thought the old
stragglers would catch us and run off with
You see, children's books, and meet-
ings, and sermons, all had to be strong in
old times. Ministers nowadays appear to
fight shy of hell, but it looks to me that if
there was one once, there's one now, and
the same kind of a one. Well, we can none
of us tell yet. Old stragglers? Well-
what you might call tramps. The chil-
dren used to scatter and hide.
If you
want to hear, I can tell you a little ditty
about the Universalist meeting-house. It
stands down on Cole's Hill, by the water-
side.

When it was building, one of the carpenters carried home an armful of the chips; but his wife refused to use them. She said she would never cook her victuals with Universalist chips."

"But who was Mr. Barnes?"

66

'Oh, Isaac Barnes; he turned Universalist. He lived over T'other Side, on the Green. Pretty well off. A dapper built little man, of the odd sort, mighty sharp for an answer. He had a squeally kind of voice. You would be pleased to hear some of the Isaac Barnes stories, as Bourne Spooner used to tell them. But Bourne Spooner went some years ago. Bourne was a good man; good to the poor; employed a great many men in his cordage works. a wonderful help to abolitionism, bestowed money, got up meetings, and took the speakers right into his family. I presume you've heard tell of Garrison and Phillips; they used to all sit up nights, he a telling his stories, and they listening. But now, Isaac. There was a four-days meeting here, and the head preacher from New Bedford a large, pompous kind he was

He was

tried to get Isaac Barnes to attend. Isaac answered him, 'Oh, no, Mr. Holmes, my Bible tells me that when a man prays he must go into his closet and pray in secret.' Then the minister looked him in the face, and said he, very solemn, But Mr. Barnes, are you that man? Do you go into your closet and pray in secret?' Said Isaac to him, piping up, 'Oh, Mr. Holmes, if I should tell you, it wouldn't be any secret at all!'"

"Your Mr. Isaac had Scripture on his side."

"Yes, and the New England Primer. 'In secret pray, Mind little play,' that says. My mother learned to read from that Primer, and I learned my Catechism from the selfsame one; and what is left of it is in one of the cubbies of my old desk. I presume you never came across one. Blue covers, little thin book, about six inches by three. I knew the whole of it by heart, title-page and preface way through to where it told about The late Reverend and Venerable M. NATHANIEL CLAPP, of Newport on Rhode Island; his Advice to Children.' I don't remember any other books for the children to read than the Primer and Goody Two Shoes, though some had the Pilgrim's Progress. It was a part of every day's business to make the children learn their 'catechise' and say it, especially of a Saturday night. It had the doctrines. all printed out. Sunday used to begin at sundown, Saturday night. Boys quit play. No work done Sunday, not even a bed made till after sundown. I have in mind some Golden Wedding verses about a couple of our relations:

"Then, when the serene Sabbath morning arose, And the late busy household was hushed in repose, When the sun hardly ventured to look down beneath,

And the air seemed almost too holy to breathe,
When no little foot must be noisily stirred,
And no little voice e'en in whisper be heard,
As father, low-voiced, read the sacred commands,
While mother rocked softly, with white folded
hands,

Then she, that is Sally, in best meeting clothes,
Came down from her chamber, as sweet as a rose,
All ready, when father for meeting inclined,
To mount the high pillion and hold on behind.'

"Riding horseback, the woman sat on a cushion seat behind, and held on by a handkerchief tied round the man's waist. This was a kind of a force-put, for nobody

had a carriage then, without it was here and there a well-off man owned a chaise. But everybody that was so as to get from the bed to the fire had to go to meeting, nolus bolus, as Skipper Doty used to say, -I-feel-a Doty' was the name he went by, on account of his saying that over so much in his exhortations.

Sundays we boys at home used to stand by the westerly window when it was time for Sunday to abate, and watch the sun go down. Then we could walk out. My mother would never have thought of such a thing as stepping out-doors on the Sabbath, other than to go to meeting, not even into her flower-garden. Nobody would ever touch a flower to break it off, Sabbath day! And father father - why, I don't believe my father's eyes could ever have closed again if they had looked off on the salt water and seen the boats getting under weigh one after another, as they do now, soon as there's tide enough, as if they'd been waiting. Why, you don't know what an unheard-of thing it was for any decent body to go on the salt water of a Sabbath day!"

"Stranger, you're off soundings there. We'd miss the tides dreadfully. I presume to say there's no time in the day that I don't know whether the tide is coming or going. If there's a tempest a-brewing, we look to see if the tide will bring the cloud over. My poor wife used to take a sight o' comfort watching the tide creeping along up the channels and all the little guzzles. She said 'twas like one o' the family coming and going. And 'twas waited for like one of the family. She had her meals according as the boats had to start, or as the tide would bring them in. She used to admire to sit and watch the boats. We had to catch rain water, and if the sky looked lowery, she used to say, 'Tide at flood, set your tub. Tide at ebb, go to bed.' When we set up leach' to make soap, the soap's coming' depended on the tide's coming; and if anybody was near death, they said, 'He'll go out with the tide.' Why, in old times the tide, and the almanac, and the moon, and the Bible and Catechism were what people lived by. Dates of what had taken place, or was to take place, settling wages, all were put

6

-

Drawn hither by the Old, I have been strongly held by the New. But to-day, for the surely last time, I have been my accustomed rounds. How suggestive are many of the Pilgrim memorials! One can easily imagine Captain Miles polishing that weapon of his, by no means the sword of the spirit, and his daughter Lora scouring the pewter platter and big iron pot, or bending over her framed "sampler" when its faded floss was new; also Peregrine White's mother preserving her choice treasures in the drawers of that small inlaid cabinet. And there is "the china teapot, brought over by John Alden," almost sure to have been used at the first wedded and happy teatime that came after John had spoken for himself. And the quaint old arm-chairs of Governor Carver and Elder Brewster - how easy to think of their respective owners reclining therein, the forefathers gathered around in council, or for devotional exercises, in which the foremothers also engaged.

"Their greeting very soft, Good morrow very kind;

How sweet it sounded oft, Before we were refined.

Humility their care, Their failings very few; My heart, how kind their manners were, When this old chair was new!"

66

And the Pilgrim spirit has not fled." Gratefully do I bear testimony to the kind manners, and “Good morrows very kind," of their living descendants. With what patience have these answered my persistent questions, and with what true refinement have they ignored my ignorance and that air of superiority sure to invest city residents coming into what they are pleased to call "provincial towns." During summer a succession of visiting friends permits unlimited gayety in the residents. I was a stranger, but they have taken me into their pleasant gatherings, and even into their homes. I have picnicked with them at Manomet, at the Drinking Place, and on the shores of several of their three hundred and sixty-five ponds. Never were such drives through such woods, never were such lakes called ponds. I have been where in early springtime the Mayflower, dear to every true Plymouthean, hides under the dry leaves, and where in summer the pink Sabbatia displays itself on the edges of South Pond. They have shown me where to pick up

arrowheads on sunny hill-slopes by running streams, the old Indian haunts, centres now of this civilization. I have drunk of every spring that has bubbled up in my devious way, even of the "boiling springs " on the salt sea-shores, covered by the sea at high tide. I have threaded North Alley and South Alley and Clam-shell Alley, and, on the wooded shores of Billington Sea, I have lost myself in the sequestered paths and overshadowed roadways of Forest Park, recently secured to the town, I am told, by some public-spirited citizens. I have availed myself of the street cars to visit the town's northern boundary, Rocky Nook, some three miles out and not far from "Seaside," once the home of that business man, philanthropist, and genial story-teller, Bourne Spooner. Travelling less than a mile in the opposite direction, by the same very modern conveyance I crossed Hobbshole Brook where, upon the land allotted to him, lived Nathaniel Morton, author of New England's Memorial, and secretary of the first colony for nearly forty years. In a southern woods' drive of ten miles or so, up hill and down valley, one gets a vision of those magnificent lakes, Long Pond and Halfway Pond, and a chance to look down one hundred and eighty feet of cliff upon the breaking waves. Verily one's cup runneth over, when, in a few hours' drive and back, one can enjoy the varied delights of woods, streams, lakes, and ocean, returning at eve to join in social entertainments and light talk, or, if inclined, to sit on the doorsteps and discuss the weightier matters of theosophy, metaphysics, philanthropy, and social economy; especially if one has been told that the exigencies of tides, combined with various wind and weather contingencies, demand a phenomenally early bestirring for the next morning's bay fishing, the hour having been determined, of course, only after those serious conferences and profound calculations which, as I observe, forerun all water excursions.

How delightful are the late returns from some of these, drifting up with the tide from perhaps a late clambake, singing songs that everybody knows, the interest being heightened—at the expense of harmony

by the occasional grounding and grinding of the boat's keel, or possibly a centreboard — if one might risk the use of a term so unfamiliar! Delightful, too, is the climb