THE

Atlantic monthly.

A magazine of literature, art, and politics.

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Vol.  XII.—­September, 1863.—­No.  LXXI.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by Ticknor and fields, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

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The Puritan minister.

It 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 but that a stout wooden gate at each end of the village street indicates that there is something outside which must stay outside, if possible.  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 these abundant log-huts and scanty 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 Massachusetts Colony is the great observance to pass before our eyes?  If it be Cambridge village, the warning drum is beating 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, but offering in this case goods without money and beyond price.  But 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, which gives the summons, we will draw near to this important building, the centre of the village, the one public edifice,—­meeting-house, town-house, school-house, watch-house, all in one.  So important is it, that no one can legally dwell more than a half-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.