shaven and dressed humanity,—­young and old with solemn and demure faces, with brown-ribboned queues, and garments of domestic making.  Fresh, strong, tall girls of five feet ten, dressed in straw bonnets of their own handiwork, and sometimes with scarlet cardinals lightly flung over their shoulders, sprang over the wagon-thills to the ground.  Now and then the more remote dwellers came on horseback, each Jack with his Gill on a pillion behind, and holding him with a proper and dignified embrace.

Hard-handed youths, with bright, determined faces,—­men nursed in blockhouses, born in forts,—­men who had raised their corn when the loaded gun went every step with the hoe and the plough,—­such men, of whom the Revolution had been made, who could say nothing, and do everything, stood in a crowd around the meeting-house door.  There was some excitement in meeting each other, though there was very little, if anything, to say.  There was time enough in those days.  Progress wasn’t in such a hurry as now.  Inventions came calmly along, once in a man’s life, and not, as now, each heel-trodden by that of his neighbor, tripping up and passing it, in the speed of the breathless race.

The sun itself seemed to shine with a calmer and silenter radiance over the broad, leisurely land.

Time enough, bless you! and the Sunday, any way, is so long!

This Sunday morning, at ten o’clock, Dorcas has already been up and dressed six hours.  Everything having the remotest connection with domestic duties has been finished and laid aside long ago, and she has devoted the last two hours to solitary meditations, mostly of the kind already mentioned.

In the great oven, since last night, has lain the Sunday supper of baked pork-and-beans, Indian-pudding, and brown bread, all the better the longer they bake, and all unfailing in their character of excellence.  In the square room, in the green arm-chair, sits the Colonel, fast asleep.

Four hours ago, he fumed and fretted about barn and cow-house, breakfasted, and had family-prayers.  Since then, he has donned his Sabbath array, both mental and bodily.  Mentally, having dismissed the cares of the week, he has strictly united himself with his body, and gone to sleep.  Bodily, he appears in a suit of hemlock-dyed, with Matherman buttons, knee- and shoe-buckles of silver.  His gray hair is neatly composed in a queue, his full cheeks rest on his portly chest, and the outward visibly harmonizes with the inward man.  He sleeps soundly now, purposing faithfully to keep awake during the three-and-twenty heads of the minister’s discourse.  If he finds it too much for him, he means to stand, as he often does.  Sometimes he partakes freely of the aromatic stimulants carried by his wife and daughter as bouquets.  The southernwood wakes him, and the green seeds of the caraway get him well along through the sermon.

Mrs. Fox steps softly in, rustling in the same black taffeta she always wears, and the same black silk bonnet,—­worn just fifty-two days in a year, and carefully pinned and boxed away for all the other three hundred and thirteen.