FROM “ATLANTIC ESSAYS.”
[¹] Copyright, Geo. R. Shepard.
T is nine o’clock upon a summer Sunday morning, in the year sixteen hundred and something. The sun looks down brightly on a little forest settlement, around whose expanding fields the great American wilderness recedes each day, withdrawing its bears and wolves and Indians into an ever remoter distance—not yet so far removed but a stout wooden gate at the end of the village street indicates that there is danger outside. It would look very busy and thriving in this little place to-day but for the Sabbath stillness which broods over everything with almost an excess of calm. Even the smoke ascends more faintly than usual from the chimneys of the numerous log-huts and these few framed houses, and since three o’clock yesterday afternoon not a stroke of this world’s work has been done. Last night a Preparatory Lecture was held, and now comes the consummation of the whole week’s life, in the solemn act of worship. In which settlement of the great Massachusetts Colony is the great ceremonial to pass before our eyes? If it be Cambridge village, a drum is sounding its peaceful summons to the congregation. If it be Salem village, a bell is sounding its more ecclesiastic peal, and a red flag is simultaneously hung forth from the meeting-house, like the auction-flag of later periods. If it be Haverhill village, then Abraham Tyler has been blowing his horn assiduously for half an hour—a service for which Abraham, each year, receives a half pound of pork from every family in town.
Be it drum, bell, or horn that gives the summons, we will draw near to this important building, the centre of the village, the one public edifice: meeting-house, town-house, schoolhouse, watch-house, all in one. So important is it, that no one can legally dwell more than half a mile from it. And yet the people ride to “meeting,” short though the distance be, for at yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from behind her husband; and has it not, moreover, been found needful to impose a fine of forty shillings on fast trotting to and fro? All sins are not modern ones, young gentlemen.
We approach nearer still, and come among the civic institutions. This is the pillory, yonder are the stocks, and there is a large wooden cage, a terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the meeting-house is a high wooden paling, to which the law permits citizens to tie their horses, provided it be not done too near the passageway. For at that opening stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of armor which is painted black, and cost the town twenty-four shillings by the bill. He bears also a heavy match-lock musket; his rest, or iron fork, is stuck in the ground, ready to support the weapon; and he is girded with his bandolier, or broad leather belt, which sustains a sword and a dozen tin cartridge-boxes.
O the silence of this place of worship, after the solemn service sets in! “People do not sneeze or cough here in public assemblies,” says one writer triumphantly, “so much as in England.” The warning caution, “Be short,” which the minister has inscribed above his study-door, claims no authority over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing, and no one thinks it long; for, indeed, at prayer-meetings four persons will sometimes pray an hour each—one with confession, one with private petitions, a third with petitions for Church and Kingdom, and a fourth with thanksgiving—each theme being conscientiously treated by itself. Then he may preach his hour, and, turning his hour-glass, may say—but that he cannot foresee the levity to be born in a later century with Mather Byles—“Now, my hearers, we will take another glass.”
