Alice looked up.
"There is one question, Alice, which I wish you would answer."
Alice did not inquire what the question was, but began to look very solemn; and just then the door was shut—and so I never knew what the question was—only I observed that James Martyrs seemed in some seventh heaven for a week afterwards, and—and—you can finish for yourself, lady.
THE SABBATH.
SKETCHES FROM A NOTE BOOK OF AN ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.
The Puritan Sabbath—is there such a thing existing now, or has it gone with the things that were, to be looked at as a curiosity in the museum of the past? Can any one, in memory, take himself back to the unbroken stillness of that day, and recall the sense of religious awe which seemed to brood in the very atmosphere, checking the merry laugh of childhood, and chaining in unwonted stillness the tongue of volatile youth, and imparting even to the sunshine of heaven, and the unconscious notes of animals, a tone of its own gravity and repose? If you cannot remember these things, go back with me to the verge of early boyhood, and live with me one of the Sabbaths that I have spent beneath the roof of my uncle, Phineas Fletcher.
Imagine the long sunny hours of a Saturday afternoon insensibly slipping away, as we youngsters are exploring the length and breadth of a trout stream, or chasing gray squirrels, or building mud milldams in the brook. The sun sinks lower and lower, but we still think it does not want half an hour to sundown. At last, he so evidently is really going down, that there is no room for scepticism or latitude of opinion on the subject; and with many a lingering regret, we began to put away our fish-hooks, and hang our hoops over our arm, preparatory to trudging homeward.
"O Henry, don't you wish that Saturday afternoons lasted longer?" said little John to me.
"I do," says Cousin Bill, who was never the boy to mince matters in giving his sentiments; "and I wouldn't care if Sunday didn't come but once a year."