It is worth all the inconveniences arising from the occasional
over-action of New England Sabbath observance, to obtain the full flavor
of a New England Sunday. But for this, one should have been born there;
should have found Sunday already waiting for him, and accepted it with
implicit and absolute conviction, as if it were a law of nature, in the
same way that night and day, summer and winter, are parts of nature. He
should have been brought up by parents who had done the same thing, as
_they_ were by parents even more strict, if that were possible; until
not religious persons peculiarly, but everybody--not churches alone, but
society itself, and all its population, those who broke it as much as
those who kept it--were stained through with the color of Sunday. Nay,
until Nature had adopted it, and laid its commands on all birds and
beasts, on the sun and winds, and upon the whole atmosphere; so that
without much imagination one might imagine, in a genuine New England
Sunday of the Connecticut River Valley stamp, that God was still on that
day resting from all the work which he had created and made, and that
all his work rested with him!
Over all the town rested the Lord's peace! The saw was ripping away
yesterday in the carpenter's shop, and the hammer was noisy enough.
Today there is not a sign of life there. The anvil makes no music
to-day. Tommy Taft's buckets and barrels give forth no hollow, thumping
sound. The mill is silent--only the brook continues noisy. Listen! In
yonder pine woods what a cawing of crows! Like an echo, in a wood still
more remote other crows are answering. But even a crow's throat to-day
is musical. Do they think, because they have black coats on, that they
are parsons, and have a right to play pulpit with all the pine-trees?
Nay. The birds will not have any such monopoly,--they are all singing,
and singing all together, and no one cares whether his song rushes
across another's or not. Larks and robins, blackbirds and orioles,
sparrows and bluebirds, mocking cat-birds and wrens, were furrowing the
air with such mixtures as no other day but Sunday, when all artificial
and human sounds cease, could ever hear. Every now and then a bobolink
seemed impressed with the duty of bringing these jangling birds into
more regularity; and like a country singing-master, he flew down the
ranks, singing all the parts himself in snatches, as if to stimulate and
help the laggards. In vain! Sunday is the birds' day, and they will have
their own democratic worship.
There was no sound in the village street. Look either way--not a
vehicle, not a human being. The smoke rose up soberly and quietly, as if
it said--It is Sunday! The leaves on the great elms hung motionless,
glittering in dew, as if they too, like the people who dwelt under their
shadow, were waiting for the bell to ring for meeting. Bees sung and
flew as usual; but honey-bees have a Sunday way with them all the week,
and could scarcely change for the better on the seventh day.
But oh, the Sun! It had sent before and cleared every stain out of the
sky. The blue heaven was not dim and low, as on secular days, but curved
and deep, as if on Sunday it shook off all incumbrance which during the
week had lowered and flattened it, and sprang back to the arch and
symmetry of a dome. All ordinary sounds caught the spirit of the day.
The shutting of a door sounded twice as far as usual. The rattle of a
bucket in a neighbor's yard, no longer mixed with heterogeneous noises,
seemed a new sound. The hens went silently about, and roosters crowed in
psalm-tunes. And when the first bell rung, Nature seemed overjoyed to
find something that it might do without breaking Sunday, and rolled the
sound over and over, and pushed it through the air, and raced with it
over field and hill, twice as far as on week-days. There were no less
than seven steeples in sight from the belfry, and the sexton said:--"On
still Sundays I've heard the bell, at one time and another, when the day
was fair, and the air moving in the right way, from every one of them
steeples, and I guess likely they've all heard our'n."
"Come, Rose!" said Agate Bissell, at an even earlier hour than when Rose
usually awakened--"Come, Rose, it is the Sabbath. We must not be late
Sunday morning, of all days in the week. It is the Lord's day."
There was little preparation required for the day. Saturday night, in
some parts of New England, was considered almost as sacred as Sunday
itself. After sundown on Saturday night no play, and no work except such
as is immediately preparatory to the Sabbath, were deemed becoming in
good Christians. The clothes had been laid out the night before. Nothing
was forgotten. The best frock was ready; the hose and shoes were
waiting. Every article of linen, every ruffle and ribbon, were selected
on Saturday night. Every one in the house walked mildly. Every one spoke
in a low tone. Yet all were cheerful. The mother had on her kindest
face, and nobody laughed, but everybody made it up in smiling. The nurse
smiled, and the children held on to keep down a giggle within the lawful
bounds of a smile; and the doctor looked rounder and calmer than ever;
and the dog flapped his tail on the floor with a softened sound, as if
he had fresh wrapped it in hair for that very day. Aunt Toodie, the cook
(so the children had changed Mrs. Sarah Good's name), was blacker than
ever and shinier than ever, and the coffee better, and the cream
richer, and the broiled chickens juicier and more tender, and the
biscuit whiter, and the corn-bread more brittle and sweet.
When the good doctor read the Scriptures at family prayer, the infection
of silence had subdued everything except the clock. Out of the wide hall
could be heard in the stillness the old clock, that now lifted up its
voice with unwonted emphasis, as if, unnoticed through the bustling
week, Sunday was its vantage ground, to proclaim to mortals the swift
flight of time. And if the old pedant performed the task with something
of an ostentatious precision, it was because in that house nothing else
put on official airs, and the clock felt the responsibility of doing it
for the whole mansion.
And now came mother and catechism; for Mrs. Wentworth followed the old
custom, and declared that no child of hers should grow up without
catechism. Secretly, the doctor was quite willing, though openly he
played off upon the practice a world of good-natured discouragement, and
declared that there should be an opposition set up--a catechism of
Nature, with natural laws for decrees, and seasons for Providence, and
flowers for graces! The younger children were taught in simple
catechism. But Rose, having reached the mature age of twelve, was now
manifesting her power over the Westminster Shorter Catechism; and as it
was simply an achievement of memory and not of the understanding, she
had the book at great advantage, and soon subdued every question and
answer in it. As much as possible, the doctor was kept aloof on such
occasions. His grave questions were not to edification, and often they
caused Rose to stumble, and brought down sorely the exultation with
which she rolled forth, "They that are effectually called do in this
life partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several
benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them."
"What do those words mean, Rose?"
"Which words, pa?"
"Adoption, sanctification, and justification?"
Rose hesitated, and looked at her mother for rescue.
"Doctor, why do you trouble the child? Of course she don't know yet all
the meaning. But that will come to her when she grows older."
"You make a nest of her memory, then, and put words there, like eggs,
for future hatching?"
"Yes, that is it exactly: birds do not hatch their eggs the minute they
lay them. They wait."
"Laying eggs at twelve to be hatched at twenty is subjecting them to
some risk, is it not?"
"It might be so with eggs, but not with the catechism. That will keep
without spoiling a hundred years!"
"Because it is so dry?"
"Because it is so good. But do, dear husband, go away, and not put
notions in the children's heads. It's hard enough already to get them
through their tasks. Here's poor Arthur, who has been two Sundays on one
question, and has not got it yet."
Arthur, aforesaid, was sharp and bright in anything addressed to his
reason, but he had no verbal memory, and he was therefore wading
painfully through the catechism like a man in a deep-muddy road; with
this difference, that the man carries too much clay with him, while
nothing stuck to poor Arthur.
* * * * *
The beauty of the day, the genial season of the year, brought forth
every one; old men and their feebler old wives, young and hearty men and
their plump and ruddy companions,--young men and girls and children,
thick as punctuation points in Hebrew text, filled the street. In a low
voice, they spoke to each other in single sentences.
"A fine day! There'll be a good congregation out to-day."
"Yes; we may expect a house full. How is Widow Cheney--have you heard?"
"Well, not much better; can't hold out many days. It will be a great
loss to the children."
"Yes; but we must all die--nobody can skip his turn. Does she still talk
about them that's gone?"
"They say not. I believe she's sunk into a quiet way; and it looks as if
she'd go off easy."
"Sunday is a good day for dying--it's about the only journey that speeds
well on this day!"
There was something striking in the outflow of people into the street,
that till now had seemed utterly deserted. There was no fevered hurry;
no negligent or poorly dressed people. Every family came in groups--old
folks and young children; and every member blossomed forth in his best
apparel, like a rose-bush in June. Do you know that man in a silk hat
and new black coat? Probably it is some stranger. No; it is the
carpenter, Mr. Baggs, who was racing about yesterday with his sleeves
rolled up, and a dust-and-business look in his face! I knew you would
not know him. Adams Gardner, the blacksmith,--does he not look every
inch a judge, now that he is clean-washed, shaved, and dressed? His eyes
are as bright as the sparks that fly from his anvil!
Are not the folks proud of their children? See what groups of them! How
ruddy and plump are most! Some are roguish, and cut clandestine capers
at every chance. Others seem like wax figures, so perfectly proper are
they. Little hands go slyly through the pickets to pluck a tempting
flower. Other hands carry hymn-books or Bibles. But, carry what they
may, dressed as each parent can afford, is there anything the sun shines
upon more beautiful than these troops of Sunday children?
The old bell had it all its own way up in the steeple. It was the
licensed noise of the day. In a long shed behind the church stood a
score and half-score of wagons and chaises and carryalls,--the horses
already beginning the forenoon's work of stamping and whisking the
flies. More were coming. Hiram Beers had "hitched up," and brought two
loads with his new hack; and now, having secured the team, he stood with
a few admiring young fellows about him, remarking on the people as
they came up.
"There's Trowbridge--he'll git asleep afore the first prayer's over. I
don't b'lieve he's heerd a sermon in ten years. I've seen him sleep
standin' up in singin'.
"Here comes Deacon Marble,--smart old feller, ain't he?--wouldn't think
it, jest to look at him! Face looks like an ear of last summer's sweet
corn, all dried up; but I tell ye he's got the juice in him yit! Aunt
Polly's gittin' old, ain't she? They say she can't walk half the
time--lost the use of her limbs; but it's all gone to her tongue. That's
as good as a razor, and a sight better 'n mine, for it never needs
sharpenin'.
"Stand away, boys, there's 'Biah Cathcart. Good horses--not fast, but
mighty strong, just like the owner."
And with that Hiram touched his new Sunday hat to Mrs. Cathcart and
Alice; and as he took the horses by the bits, he dropped his head and
gave the Cathcart boys a look of such awful solemnity, all except one
eye, that they lost their sobriety. Barton alone remained sober as
a judge.
"Here comes 'Dot-and-Go-One' and his wife. They're my kind o'
Christians. She is a saint, at any rate."
"How is it with you, Tommy Taft?"
"Fair to middlin', thank'e. Such weather would make a hand-spike
blossom, Hiram."
"Don't you think that's a leetle strong, Tommy, for Sunday? P'raps you
mean afore it's cut?"
"Sartin; that's what I mean. But you mustn't stop me, Hiram. Parson
Buell 'll be lookin' for me. He never begins till I git there."
"You mean you always git there 'fore he begins."
Next, Hiram's prying eyes saw Mr. Turfmould, the sexton and undertaker,
who seemed to be in a pensive meditation upon all the dead that he had
ever buried. He looked upon men in a mild and pitying manner, as if he
forgave them for being in good health. You could not help feeling that
he gazed upon you with a professional eye, and saw just how you would
look in the condition which was to him the most interesting period of a
man's earthly state. He walked with a soft tread, as if he was always at
a funeral; and when he shook your hand, his left hand half followed his
right, as if he were about beginning to lay you out. He was one of the
few men absorbed by his business, and who unconsciously measured all
things from its standpoint.
"Good-morning, Mr. Turfmould! How's your health? How is business with
you?"
"Good--the Lord be praised! I've no reason to complain."
And he glided silently and smoothly into the church.
"There comes Judge Bacon, white and ugly," said the critical Hiram. "I
wonder what he comes to meetin' for. Lord knows he needs it, sly,
slippery old sinner! Face's as white as a lily; his heart's as black as
a chimney flue afore it's cleaned. He'll get his flue burned out if he
don't repent, that's certain. He don't believe the Bible. They say he
don't believe in God. Wal, I guess it's pretty even between 'em.
Shouldn't wonder if God didn't believe in him neither."
As soon as the afternoon service was over, every horse on the green knew
that it was time for him to go home. Some grew restless and whinnied for
their masters. Nimble hands soon put them into the shafts or repaired
any irregularity of harness. Then came such a scramble of vehicles to
the church door for the older persons; while young women and children,
venturing further out upon the green, were taken up hastily, that the
impatient horses might as soon as possible turn their heads homeward.
Clouds of dust began to arise along every outward-going road. In less
than ten minutes not a wagon or chaise was seen upon the village green.
They were whirling homeward at the very best pace that the horses could
raise. Stiff old steeds vainly essayed a nimbler gait, but gave it up in
a few rods, and fell back to the steady jog. Young horses, tired of long
standing, and with a strong yearning for evening oats, shot along the
level ground, rushed up the little hills, or down upon the other side,
in the most un-Sunday-like haste. The scene was not altogether unlike
the return from a military funeral, _to_ which men march with sad music
and slow, but _from_ which they return nimbly marching to the most
brilliant quick-step.
In half an hour Norwood was quiet again. The dinner, on Sunday, when for
the sake of the outlying population the two services are brought near
together in the middle of the day, was usually deferred till the
ordinary supper hour. It was evident that the tone of the day was
changed. Children were not so strictly held in. There was no loud
talking, nor was laughing allowed, but a general feeling sprung up
around the table that the severer tasks of the day were ended.
Devout and age-sobered people sat in a kind of golden twilight of
meditation. The minister, in his well-ordered house, tired with a double
service, mingled thoughts both glad and sad. His tasks were ended. He
was conscious that he had manfully done his best. But that best doing,
as he reflected upon it, seemed so poor, so unworthy of the nobleness of
the theme, and so relatively powerless upon the stubborn stuff of which
his people's dispositions were made, that there remained a vague,
unquiet sense of blame upon his conscience.
It was Dr. Wentworth's habit to walk with his family in the garden,
early in the morning and late in the afternoon. If early, Rose was
usually his company; in the afternoon the whole family, Agate Bissell
always excepted. She had in full measure that peculiar New England
feeling that Sunday is to be kept by staying in the house, except such
time as is spent at church. And though she never, impliedly even,
rebuked the doctor's resort to his garden, it was plain that deep down
in her heart she thought it an improper way of spending Sunday; and in
that view she had the secret sympathy of almost all the noteworthy
villagers. Had any one, upon that day, made Agate a visit, unless for
some plain end of necessity or mercy, she would have deemed it a
personal affront.
Sunday was the Lord's day. Agate acted as if any use of it for her own
pleasure would be literal and downright stealing.
"We have six days for our own work. We ought not to begrudge the Lord
one whole day."
Two circumstances distressed honest Agate's conscience. The one was that
the incursion of summer visitors from the city was tending manifestly to
relax the Sabbath, especially after the church services. The other was
that Dr. Wentworth would occasionally allow Judge Bacon to call in and
discuss with him topics suggested by the sermons. She once expressed
herself in this wise:--
"Either Sunday is worth keeping, or it is not. If you do keep it, it
ought to be strictly done. But lately Sunday is raveling out at the end.
We take it on like a summer dress, which in the morning is clean and
sweet, but at night it is soiled at the bottom and much rumpled
all over."
Dr. Wentworth sat with Rose on one side and her mother on the other, in
the honeysuckle corner, where the west could be seen, great trees lying
athwart the horizon and checkering the golden light with their dark
masses. Judge Bacon had turned the conversation upon this very topic.
"I think our Sundays in New England are Puritan and Jewish more than
Christian. They are days of restriction rather than of joyousness. They
are fast days, not feast days."
"Do you say that as a mere matter of historical criticism, or do you
think that they could be improved practically?"
"Both. It is susceptible of proof that the early Christian Sunday was a
day of triumph and of much social joy. It would be well if we could
follow primitive example."
"Judge, I am hardly of your opinion. I should be unwilling to see our
New England Sunday changed, except perhaps by a larger social liberty
_in_ each family. Much might be done to make it attractive to children,
and relieve older persons from _ennui_. But after all, we must judge
things by their fruits. If you bring me good apples, it is in vain to
abuse the tree as craggy, rude, or homely. The fruit redeems the tree."
"A very comely figure, Doctor, but not very good reasoning. New England
has had something at work upon her beside her Sundays. What you call the
'fruit' grew, a good deal of it at any rate, on other trees than
Sunday trees."
"You are only partly right. New England character and history are the
result of a wide-spread system of influences of which the Sabbath day
was the type--and not only so, but the grand motive power. Almost every
cause which has worked benignly among us has received its inspiration
and impulse largely from this One Solitary Day of the week.
"It is true that all the vegetable growths that we see about us here
depend upon a great variety of causes; but there is one cause that is
the condition of power in every other, and that is the Sun! And so, many
as have been the influences working at New England character, Sunday has
been a generic and multiplex force, inspiring and directing all others.
It is indeed the _Sun's_ day.
"It is a little singular that, borrowing the name from the heathen
calendar, it should have tallied so well with the Scripture name, the
Lord's day--that Lord who was the Morning Star in early day, and at
length the Sun of Righteousness!
"The Jews called it the Sabbath--a day of rest. Modern Christians call
it the _Sun's_ day, or the day of light, warmth, and growth. If this
seems fanciful so far as the names of the day are concerned, it is
strikingly characteristic of the real spirit of the two days, in the
ancient and modern dispensation. I doubt if the old Jews ever kept a
Sabbath religiously, as we understand that term. Indeed, I suspect there
was not yet a religious strength in that national character that could
hold up religious feeling without the help of social and even physical
adjuvants. Their religious days were either fasts or like our
Thanksgiving days. But the higher and richer moral nature which has been
developed by Christianity enables communities to sustain one day in
seven upon a high spiritual plane, with the need of but very little
social help, and without the feasting element at all."
"That may be very well for a few saints like you and me, Doctor, but it
is too high for the majority of men. Common people find the strict
Sundays a great annoyance, and clandestinely set them aside."
"I doubt it. There are a few in every society that live by their
sensuous nature. Sunday must be a dead day to them--a dark room. No
wonder they break through. But it is not so with the sturdy,
unsophisticated laboring class in New England. If it came to a vote, you
would find that the farmers of New England would be the defenders of the
day, even if screwed up to the old strictness. Their instinct is right.
It is an observance that has always worked its best effects upon the
common people, and if I were to change the name, I should call Sunday
THE POOR MAN'S DAY.
"Men do not yet perceive that the base of the brain is full of
despotism, and the coronal brain is radiant with liberty. I mean that
the laws and relations which grow out of men's relations in physical
things are the sternest and hardest, and at every step in the assent
toward reason and spirituality, the relations grow more kindly and free.
"Now, it is natural for men to prefer an animal life. By-and-by they
will learn that such a life necessitates force, absolutism. It is
natural for unreflecting men to complain when custom or institutions
hold them up to some higher degree. But that higher degree has in it an
element of emancipation from the necessary despotisms of physical life.
If it were possible to bring the whole community up to a plane of
spirituality, it would be found that there and there only could be the
highest measure of liberty. And this is my answer to those who grumble
at the restriction of Sunday liberty. It is only the liberty of the
senses that suffers. A higher and nobler civil liberty, moral liberty,
social liberty, will work out of it. Sunday is the common people's
Magna Charta."
"Well done, Doctor! I give up. Hereafter you shall see me radiant on
Sunday. I must not get my hay in if storms do threaten to spoil it; but
I shall give my conscience a hitch up, and take it out in that. I must
not ride out; but then I shall regard every virtuous self-denial as a
moral investment with good dividends coming in by-and-by. I can't let
the children frolic in the front dooryard; but then, while they sit
waiting for the sun to go down, and your _Sun_-day to be over, I shall
console myself that they are one notch nearer an angelic condition every
week. But good-night, good-night, Mrs. Wentworth. I hope you may not
become so spiritual as quite to disdain the body. I really think, for
this world, the body has some respectable uses yet. Good-night, Rose.
The angels take care of you, if there is one of them good enough."
And so the judge left.
They sat silently looking at the sun, now but just above the horizon. A
few scarfs of cloud, brilliant with flame-color, and every moment
changing forms, seemed like winged spirits, half revealed, that hovered
round the retiring orb.
Mrs. Wentworth at length broke the silence.
"I always thought, Doctor, that you believed Sunday over-strictly kept,
and that you were in favor of relaxation."
"I am. Just as fast as you can make it a day of real religious
enjoyment, it will relax itself. True and deep spiritual feeling is the
freest of all experiences. And it reconciles in itself the most perfect
consciousness of liberty with the most thorough observance of outward
rules and proprieties. Liberty is not an outward condition. It is an
inward attribute, or rather a name for the quality of life produced by
the highest moral attributes. When communities come to that condition,
we shall see fewer laws and higher morality.
"The one great poem of New England is her Sunday! Through that she has
escaped materialism. That has been a crystal dome overhead, through
which Imagination has been kept alive. New England's imagination is to
be found, not in art and literature, but in her inventions, her social
organism, and above all in her religious life. The Sabbath has been the
nurse of that. When she ceases to have a Sunday, she will be as this
landscape is:--now growing dark, all its lines blurred, its distances
and gradations fast merging into sheeted darkness and night. Come, let
us go in!"
Copyrighted by Fords, Howard and Hulbert.