elders, which would remain to posterity; that they should need to be regulated by the civil magistrate, and also raise an ill savor of the people’s coldness, that would complain of much preaching, &c, whereas liberty for the ordinances was the main end professed of our coming hither.”  They were social beings, and loved stimulus like the rest of mankind, and had no public amusements.  These causes are sufficient to account for the fondness for the weekly lecture; but if to them be superadded the peculiarity of their civil and religious polity, which inculcated an extraordinary affection for each other as God’s chosen people destined to communion, not here only, but forever; and the isolation of their situation, cutting them off from participation in the stirring events to which they had been accustomed, we should wonder if they had not met frequently together.  The elders, jealous of their influence, showed in this instance, as they did in others, a knowledge of human nature, superior to that of the magistrates, and the latter were glad to retreat from the position they had taken, “lest the people should break their bonds through abuse of liberty,” if the wholesome restraint exerted by the elders, by means of the lectures, in order to retain the people in subjection to the civil power, should be withdrawn.

As the Assistant walked on, he began to meet persons coming out of their houses, in obedience to the invitation.  There was the staid citizen, whose sobriety bordered on sternness, with hair closely cropped to avoid the “unloveliness of love-locks,” covered with a large flapped peaked hat, and arrayed in broad white band and sad-colored garments, on whose arm leaned his wife, or walked independently at his side, bearing on her head a hat of similar shape to her husband’s, or else having it protected with hood, or cap, or coif; a white vandyke neckerchief falling over the shoulders, and rising high in the neck; long-waisted bodice of velvet or silk, open in front, and laced down to a point, on which was placed a rosette, with voluminous fardingale of like material, gathered up in folds behind, and supplying, though with more modesty and less bad taste, the place of the more modern “bishop,” now happily banished these regions.  Behind came the sons and daughters, attired like their parents, and imitating them in gravity of demeanor.  There were also some indented apprentices and serving men and serving women, whom either the zeal of their masters and mistresses required, or their own tastes or ideas of duty induced to be present, while here and there, at the corners of the streets, might be seen an occasional Indian, with bow in hand, listening with admiration to the marvellous music of the blood-stirring instrument, and gazing with feelings compounded of fear and envy at the strange people gathering together to a talk with the Great Spirit.