"He had no ill-will to the Scotch; for, if he had been conscious of that, he never would have thrown himself into the bosom of their country, and trusted to the protection of its remote inhabitants with a fearless confidence."—BOSWELL'S JOHNSON.
Although it was an open and flagrant violation of the Sabbath day as it is kept in Scotch Baddeck, our kind hosts let us sleep late on Sunday morning, with no reminder that we were not sleeping the sleep of the just. It was the charming Maud, a flitting sunbeam of a girl, who waited to bring us our breakfast, and thereby lost the opportunity of going to church with the rest of the family,—an act of gracious hospitality which the tired travelers appreciated.
The travelers were unable, indeed, to awaken into any feeling of Sabbatical straitness. The morning was delicious,—such a morning as never visits any place except an island; a bright, sparkling morning, with the exhilaration of the air softened by the sea. What a day it was for idleness, for voluptuous rest, after the flight by day and night from St. John! It was enough, now that the morning was fully opened and advancing to the splendor of noon, to sit upon the upper balcony, looking upon the Bras d'Or and the peaceful hills beyond, reposeful and yet sparkling with the air and color of summer, and inhale the balmy air. (We greatly need another word to describe good air, properly heated, besides this overworked "balmy.") Perhaps it might in some regions be considered Sabbath-keeping, simply to rest in such a soothing situation,—rest, and not incessant activity, having been one of the original designs of the day.
But our travelers were from New England, and they were not willing to be outdone in the matter of Sunday observances by such an out-of- the-way and nameless place as Baddeck. They did not set themselves up as missionaries to these benighted Gaelic people, to teach them by example that the notion of Sunday which obtained two hundred years ago in Scotland had been modified, and that the sacredness of it had pretty much disappeared with the unpleasantness of it. They rather lent themselves to the humor of the hour, and probably by their demeanor encouraged the respect for the day on Cape Breton Island. Neither by birth nor education were the travelers fishermen on Sunday, and they were not moved to tempt the authorities to lock them up for dropping here a line and there a line on the Lord's day.
In fact, before I had finished my second cup of Maud-mixed coffee, my companion, with a little show of haste, had gone in search of the kirk, and I followed him, with more scrupulousness, as soon as I could without breaking the day of rest. Although it was Sunday, I could not but notice that Baddeck was a clean-looking village of white wooden houses, of perhaps seven or eight hundred inhabitants; that it stretched along the bay for a mile or more, straggling off into farmhouses at each end, lying for the most part on the sloping curve of the bay. There were a few country-looking stores and shops, and on the shore three or four rather decayed and shaky wharves ran into the water, and a few schooners lay at anchor near them; and the usual decaying warehouses leaned about the docks. A peaceful and perhaps a thriving place, but not a bustling place. As I walked down the road, a sailboat put out from the shore and slowly disappeared round the island in the direction of the Grand Narrows. It had a small pleasure party on board. None of them were drowned that day, and I learned at night that they were Roman Catholics from Whykokornagh.
The kirk, which stands near the water, and at a distance shows a pretty wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New England meeting-house. When I reached it, the house was full and the service had begun. There was something familiar in the bareness and uncompromising plainness and ugliness of the interior. The pews had high backs, with narrow, uncushioned seats. The pulpit was high,—a sort of theological fortification,—approached by wide, curving flights of stairs on either side. Those who occupied the near seats to the right and left of the pulpit had in front of them a blank board partition, and could not by any possibility see the minister, though they broke their necks backwards over their high coat-collars. The congregation had a striking resemblance to a country New England congregation of say twenty years ago. The clothes they wore had been Sunday clothes for at least that length of time.
Such clothes have a look of I know not what devout and painful respectability, that is in keeping with the worldly notion of rigid Scotch Presbyterianism. One saw with pleasure the fresh and rosy- cheeked children of this strict generation, but the women of the audience were not in appearance different from newly arrived and respectable Irish immigrants. They wore a white cap with long frills over the forehead, and a black handkerchief thrown over it and hanging down the neck,—a quaint and not unpleasing disguise.
The house, as I said, was crowded. It is the custom in this region to go to church,—for whole families to go, even the smallest children; and they not unfrequently walk six or seven miles to attend the service. There is a kind of merit in this act that makes up for the lack of certain other Christian virtues that are practiced elsewhere. The service was worth coming seven miles to participate in!—it was about two hours long, and one might well feel as if he had performed a work of long-suffering to sit through it. The singing was strictly congregational. Congregational singing is good (for those who like it) when the congregation can sing. This congregation could not sing, but it could grind the Psalms of David powerfully. They sing nothing else but the old Scotch version of the Psalms, in a patient and faithful long meter. And this is regarded, and with considerable plausibility, as an act of worship. It certainly has small element of pleasure in it. Here is a stanza from Psalm xlv., which the congregation, without any instrumental nonsense, went through in a dragging, drawling manner, and with perfect individual independence as to time:
"Thine arrows sharply pierce the heart of th' enemies of the king,
And under thy sub-jec-shi-on the people down do bring."
The sermon was extempore, and in English with Scotch pronunciation; and it filled a solid hour of time. I am not a good judge of ser- mons, and this one was mere chips to me; but my companion, who knows a sermon when he hears it, said that this was strictly theological, and Scotch theology at that, and not at all expository. It was doubtless my fault that I got no idea whatever from it. But the adults of the congregation appeared to be perfectly satisfied with it; at least they sat bolt upright and nodded assent continually. The children all went to sleep under it, without any hypocritical show of attention. To be sure, the day was warm and the house was unventilated. If the windows had been opened so as to admit the fresh air from the Bras d'Or, I presume the hard-working farmers and their wives would have resented such an interference with their ordained Sunday naps, and the preacher's sermon would have seemed more musty than it appeared to be in that congenial and drowsy air. Considering that only half of the congregation could understand the preacher, its behavior was exemplary.