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